GIFT   OF 
MARY  JVCK^CH 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE  AND  ITS 

CONSEQUENCES 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 
AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

FOUR  PERIODS  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY 


BY 

HILARY   A.  HERBERT,  LL.D. 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1912 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  April,  1912 


TO  MY  GRANDCHILDREN 

THIS   LITTLE   BOOK   IS   AFFECTIONATELY   DEDICATED 

IN   THE   HOPE   THAT   ITS   PERUSAL 

WILL   FOSTER  IN   THEM,   AS   CITIZENS    OF   THIS   GREAT 
REPUBLIC,  A  DUE  REGARD  FOR  THE  CONSTITUTION 

OF  THEIR  COUNTRY 
AS   THE    SUPREME    LAW   OF  THE   LAND 


240759 


PREFATORY  NOTE 
BY  JAMES   FORD  RHODES 

"LiVY  extolled  Pompey  in  such  a  pane 
gyric  that  Augustus  called  him  Pompeian, 
and  yet  this  was  no  obstacle  to  their 
friendship."  That  we  find  in  Tacitus.  We 
may  therefore  picture  to  ourselves  Augus 
tus  reading  Livy's  "History  of  the  Civil 
Wars"  (in  which  the  historian's  republican 
sympathies  were  freely  expressed),  and 
learning  therefrom  that  there  were  two 
sides  to  the  strife  which  rent  Rome.  As 
we  are  more  than  forty-six  years  distant 
from  our  own  Civil  War,  is  it  not  incum 
bent  on  Northerners  to  endeavor  to  see 
the  Southern  side?  We  may  be  certain 
that  the  historian  a  hundred  years  hence, 
when  he  contemplates  the  lining-up  of  five 
and  one-half  million  people  against  twenty- 
two  millions,  their  equal  in  religion,  morals, 
vii 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

regard  for  law,  and  devotion  to  the  common 
Constitution,  will,  as  matter  of  course,  aver 
that  the  question  over  which  they  fought 
for  four  years  had  two  sides;  that  all  the 
right  was  not  on  one  side  and  all  the  wrong 
on  the  other.  The  North  should  welcome, 
therefore,  accounts  of  the  conflict  written 
by  candid  Southern  men. 

Mr.  Herbert,  reared  and  educated  in  the 
South,  believing  in  the  moral  and  econom 
ical  right  of  slavery,  served  as  a  Confeder 
ate  soldier  during  the  war,  but  after  Appo- 
mattox,  when  thirty-one  years  old,  he  told 
his  father  he  had  arrived  at  the  conviction 
that  slavery  was  wrong.  Twelve  years 
later,  when  home-rule  was  completely  re 
stored  to  the  South  (1877),  he  went  into 
public  life  as  a  Member  of  Congress,  sitting 
in  the  House  for  sixteen  years.  At  the  end 
of  his  last  term,  in  1893,  he  was  appointed 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  by  President  Cleve 
land,  whom  he  faithfully  served  during  his 
second  administration. 


Vlll 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

Such  an  experience  is  an  excellent  train 
ing  for  the  treatment  of  any  aspect  of  the 
Civil  War.  Mr.  Herbert's  devotion  to  the 
Constitution,  the  Union,  and  the  flag  now 
equals  that  of  any  soldier  of  the  North 
who  fought  against  him.  We  should  expect 
therefore  that  his  work  would  be  pervaded 
by  practical  knowledge  and  candor. 

After  a  careful  reading  of  the  manuscript 
I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  ex 
pectation  is  realized.  Naturally  unable  to 
agree  entirely  with  his  presentation  of  the 
subject,  I  believe  that  his  work  exhibits  a 
side  that  entitles  it  to  a  large  hearing.  I 
hope  that  it  will  be  placed  before  the 
younger  generation,  who,  unaffected  by  any 
memory  of  the  heat  of  the  conflict,  may 
truly  say: 

Tros  Tyriusve,  mihi  nullo  discrimine  agetur. 

JAMES  FORD  RHODES. 
BOSTON,  November,   1911. 


IX 


PREFACE 

IN  1890  Mr.  L.  E.  Chittenden,  who  had 
been  United  States  Treasurer  under  Presi 
dent  Lincoln,  published  an  interesting  ac 
count  of  $10,000,000  United  States  bonds 
secretly  sent  to  England,  as  he  said,  in  1862, 
and  he  told  all  about  what  thereupon  took 
place  across  the  water.  It  was  a  reminis 
cence.  General  Charles  Francis  Adams  in 
his  recent  instructive  volume,  "Studies 
Military  and  Diplomatic,"  takes  up  this 
narrative  and,  in  a  chapter  entitled  "An 
Historical  Residuum,"  conclusively  shows 
from  contemporaneous  evidence  that  the 
bonds  were  sent,  not  in  1862,  but  in  1863, 
but  that,  as  for  the  rest  of  the  story,  the 
residuum  of  truth  in  it  was  about  like  the 
speck  of  moisture  that  is  left  when  a  soap 
bubble  is  pricked  by  a  needle. 

General  Adams  did  not  mean  that  Mr. 
Chittenden  knew  he  was  drawing  on  his  im- 

xi 


PREFACE 

agination.  He  was  only  demonstrating  that 
one  who  intends  to  write  history  cannot 
rely  on  his  memory. 

The  author,  in  the  following  pages,  is 
undertaking  to  write  a  connected  story  of 
events  that  happened,  most  of  them,  in  his 
lifetime,  and  as  to  many  of  the  most  im 
portant  of  which  he  has  vivid  recollections; 
but,  save  in  one  respect,  he  has  not  relied 
upon  his  own  memory  for  any  important 
fact.  The  picture  he  has  drawn  of  the  re 
lations  between  the  slave-holder  and  non- 
slave-holder  in  the  South  is,  much  of  it, 
given  as  he  recollects  it.  His  opportunities 
for  observation  were  somewhat  extensive, 
and  here  he  is  willing  to  be  considered  in 
part  as  a  witness.  Elsewhere  he  has  relied 
almost  entirely  upon  contemporaneous  writ 
ten  evidence,  memory,  however,  often  in 
dicating  to  him  sources  of  information. 

Nowhere  are  there  so  many  valuable  les 
sons  for  the  student  of  American  history  as 
in  the  story  of  the  great  sectional  move 
ment  of  1831,  and  of  its  results,  which  have 

xii 


PREFACE 

profoundly   affected   American    conditions 
through  generation  after  generation. 

An  effort  is  here  made  to  tell  that  story 
succinctly,  tracing  it,  step  after  step,  from 
cause  to  effect.  The  subject  divides  itself 
naturally  into  four  historic  periods: 

1.  The    anti-slavery    crusade,    1831     to 
1860. 

2.  Secession  and  four  years  of  war,  1861 
to  1865. 

3.  Reconstruction    under    the    Lincoln- 
Johnson  plan,  with  the  overthrow  by  Con 
gress  of  that  plan  and  the  rule  of  the  negro 
and  carpet-bagger,  from  1865  to  1876. 

4.  Restoration  of  self-government  in  the 
South,  and  the  results  that  have  followed. 

The  greater  part  of  the  book  is  devoted  to 
the  first  period — 1831  to  1860,  the  period  of 
causation.  The  sequences  running  through 
the  three  remaining  periods  are  more  brief 
ly  sketched. 

Italics,  throughout  the  book,  it  may  be 
mentioned  here,  are  the  author's. 

Now  that  the  country  is  happily  reunited 
xiii 


PREFACE 

in  a  Union  which  all  agree  is  indissoluble, 
the  South  wants  the  true  history  of  the 
times  here  treated  of  spread  before  its  chil 
dren  ;  so  does  the  North.  The  mistakes  that 
were  committed  on  both  sides  during  that 
lamentable  and  prolonged  sectional  quarrel 
(and  they  were  many)  should  be  known  of 
all,  in  order  that  like  mistakes  may  not  be 
committed  in  the  future.  The  writer  has, 
with  diffidence,  attempted  to  lay  the  facts 
before  his  readers,  and  so  to  condense  the 
story  that  it  may  be  within  the  reach  of 
the  ordinary  student.  How  far  he  has  suc 
ceeded  will  be  for  his  readers  to  say.  The 
verdict  he  ventures  to  hope  for  is  that  he 
has  made  an  honest  effort  to  be  fair. 

The  author  takes  this  occasion  to  thank 
that  accomplished  young  teacher  of  his 
tory,  Mr.  Paul  Micou,  for  valuable  sugges 
tions,  and  his  friend,  Mr.  Thomas  H.  Clark, 
who  with  his  varied  attainments  has  aided 
him  in  many  ways. 

HILARY  A.  HERBERT. 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C.,  March,  1912. 

xiv 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE, 

INTRODUCTION      .    .    .    */-•«  •.   •,  ,3,       3 


I.     SECESSION  AND  ITS  DOCTRINE  .    .    .  15 

II.     EMANCIPATION  PRIOR  TO  1831       .    .  37 

III.  THE  NEW  ABOLITIONISTS      ....  56 

IV.  FEELING  IN  THE  SOUTH — 1835  ...  77 
V.    ANTI-ABOLITION  AT  THE  NORTH    .     .  84 

VI.    A  CRISIS  AND  A  COMPROMISE    ...  93 

VII.     EFFORTS  FOR  PEACE 128 

VIII.    INCOMPATIBILITYOF  SLAVERY  AND  FREE 
DOM      .     .    .    , 147 

IX.     FOUR  YEARS  OF  WAR      .    .    .    .    .  180 

X.     RECONSTRUCTION,     LINCOLN-JOHNSON 

PLAN  AND  CONGRESSIONAL  .    .    .  208 

XL    THE  SOUTH  UNDER  SELF-GOVERNMENT  229 

INDEX      . 245 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE  AND  ITS 
CONSEQUENCES 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  Constitution  of  the  United  States  i 
attempts  to  define  and  limit  the  power  \ 
of  our  Federal  Government. 

Lord  Brougham  somewhere  said  that 
such  an  instrument  was  not  worth  the 
parchment  it  was  written  on;  people  would 
pay  no  regard  to  self-imposed  limitations 
on  their  own  will. 

When  our  fathers  by  that  written  Consti 
tution  established  a  government  that  was 
partly  national  and  partl^Jederal,  and  that 
had ,__no_jg r  e  cgdoa-fer'  they  knew  it  was  an 
experiment.  To-day  that  government  has 
been  in  existence  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
three  years,  and  we  proudly  claim  that  the 
experiment  of  1789  has  been  the  success  of 
the  ages. 

Happy  should  we  be  if  we  could  boast 
that,  during  all  this  period,  the  Constitu 
tion  had  never  been  violated  in  any  respect! 

The  first  palpable  infringement  of  its 
provisions  occurred  in  the  enactment  of 

3 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  alien  and  sedition  laws  of  1798.  The 
people  at  the  polls  indignantly  condemned 
these  enactments,  and  for  years  thereafter 
the  government  proceeded  peacefully;  the 
people  were  prosperous,  and  the  Union  and 
the  Constitution  grew  in  favor. 

Later,  there  grew  up  a  rancorous  sec 
tional  controversy  about  slavery  that  lasted 
many  years;  that  quarrel  was  followed 
by  a  bloody  sectional  war;  after  that  war 
came  the  reconstruction  of  the  Southern 
States.  During  each  of  these  three  trying 
eras  it  did  sometimes  seem  as  if  that  old 
piece  of  "parchment,"  derided  by  Lord} 
Brougham,  had  been  utterly  forgotten./ 
Nevertheless,  and  despite  all  these  trying 
experiences,  we  have  in  the  meantime  ad 
vanced  to  the  very  front  rank  of  nations, 
and  our  people  have  long  since  turned,  not 
only  to  the  Union,  but,  we  are  happy  to 
think,  to  the  Constitution  as  well,  with 
more  devotion  than  ever. 

It  may  be  further  said  that,  notwith 
standing  all  the  bitter  animosities  that  for 
long  divided  our  country  into  two  hostile 
sections,  that  wonderful  old  Constitution, 
handed  down  to  us  by  our  fathers,  was  al- 

4 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

ways,  and  in  all  seasons,  in  the  hearts  of 
our  people,  and  that  never  for  a  moment 
was  it  out  of  mind.  Even  in  our  sectional 
war  Confederates  and  Federals  were  both 
fighting  for  it — one  side  to  maintain  it  over 
themselves  as  an  independent  nation;  the 
other  to  maintain  it  over  the  whole  of  the 
old  Union.  In  the  very  madness  of  re 
construction  the  fundamental  idea  of  the 
Constitution,  the  equality  of  the  States, 
ultimately  prevailed — this  idea  it  was  that 
imperatively  demanded  the  final  restoration 
of  the  seceded  States,  with  the  right  of 
self-government  unimpaired. 

The  future  is  now  bright  before  us.  The 
complex  civilization  of  the  present  is,  we 
do  not  forget,  continually  presenting  new 
and  complex  problems  of  government,  and 
we  are  mindful,  too,  that,  for  the  people 
who  must  deal  with  these  problems,  a 
higher  culture  is  required,  but  to  all  this 
our  national  and  State  governments  seem  to 
be  fully  alive.  We  are  everywhere  erecting 
memorials  to  our  patriotic  dead,  we  have 
our  "flag  day"  and  many  ceremonies  to 
stimulate  patriotism,  and,  throughout  our 
whole  country,  young  Americans  are  being 

5 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

taught  more  and  more  of  American  history 
and  American  traditions. 

The  essence  of  these  teachings  presumably 
is  that  time  has  hallowed  our  Constitution, 
and  that  experience  has  fully  shown  the 
wisdom  of  its  provisions.  In  this  land  of 
ours,  where  there  are  so  much  property  and 
so  many  voters  who  want  it,  and  where  the 
honor  and  emoluments  of  high  place  are  so 
tempting  to  the  demagogue,  there  can  be 
no  such  security  for  either  life,  liberty,  or 
property  as  those  safeguards  which  our 
fathers  devised  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States. 

Our  teachers  of  history  must  therefore 
expose  fearlessly  every  violation  in  the  past 
of  our  Constitution,  and  point  out  the  pen 
alties  that  followed;  and,  above  all,  they 
cannot  afford  to  condone,  or  to  pass  by  in 
silence,  the  conduct  of  those  who  have  here-' 
tofore  advocated,  or  acted  on,  any  law  which! 
to  them  was  higher  than  the  American  Con\ 
stitution. 

One  of  the  most  serious  troubles  in  the 
past,  many  think  our  greatest,  was  our  ter 
rible  war  among  ourselves.  Perhaps,  after 
the  lapse  of  nearly  fifty  years,  we  can  all 

6  " 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

now  agree  that  if  our  people  and  our  States^ 
had  always,  between  1830  and  1860,  faith- J 
fully  observed  the  Federal  Constitution  we/ 
should  have  not  had  that  war.     However 
that  may  be,  the  crusade  of  the  Abolition 
ists,  which  began  in  1831,  was  the  beginning 
of  an  agitation  in  the  North  against  the  ex 
istence  of  slavery  in  the  South,  which  con 
tinued,  in  one  form  or  another,  until  the 
outbreak  of  that  war. 

The  negro  is  now  located,  geographically, 
much  as  he  was  then.  If  another  attempt 
shall  be  made  to  project  his  personal  status 
into  national  politics,  the  voters  of  the 
country  ought  to  know  and  consider  the 
mistakes  that  occurred,  North  and  South, 
during  the  unhappy  era  of  that  sectional 
warfare.  This  little  book  is  a  study  of  that 
period  of  our  history.  It  concludes  with  a 
glance  at  the  war  between  the  North  and 
South,  and  the  reconstruction  that  fol 
lowed. 

The  story  of  Cromwell  and  the  Great 
Revolution  it  was  impossible  for  any  Eng 
lishman  to  tell  correctly  for  nearly  or  quite 
two  centuries.  The  changes  that  had  been 
wrought  wrere  too  profound,  too  far-reach- 

7 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

ing;  and  English  writers  were  foojiumari. 
The  changes — economic,  political,  and  so 
cial — wrought  in  our  country  by  the  great 
controversy  over  slavery  and  State-rights, 
and  by  the  war  that  ended  it,  have  been 
quite  as  profound,  and  the  revolution  in 
men's  ideas  and  ways  of  looking  at  their 
past  history  has  been  quite  as  complete  as 
those  which  followed  the  downfall  of  the 
government  founded  by  Cromwell.  But  we 
are  now  in  the  twentieth  century;  history 
is  becoming  a  science,  and  we  ought  to 
succeed  better  in  writing  our  past  than  the 
Englishmen  did. 

The  culture  of  this  day  is  very  exacting  in 
its  demands,  and  if  one  is  writing  about  our 
own  past  the  need  of  fairness  is  all  the  more 
imperative.  And  why  not?  The  masses 
of  the  people,  who  clashed  on  the  battle 
fields  of  a  war  in  which  one  side  fought  for 
the  suprejrmcy^ofjthej^ipn  and  the  other 
for  the  sovereignty  of  the  States,  had  hon- 

*  -  -HuLii    >|_j *»     ^_  — i  i.      -— -^ -«fc..'^ 

est  convictions;  they  differed  in  their  con 
victions;  they  had  made  honest  mistakes 
about  each  other;  now  they  would  like 
their  histories  to  tell  just  where  those  mis 
takes  were;  they  do  not  wish  these  mis- 

8 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

takes  to  be  repeated  hereafter.  Nor  is  there 
any  reason  why  the  whole  history  of  that 
great  controversy  should  not  now  be  writ 
ten  with  absolute  fairness ;  the  two  sections 
of  our  country  have  come  together  in  a  most 
wonderful  way.  There  has  been  reunion 
after  reunion  of  the  blue  and  the  gray.  The 
survivors  of  a  New  Jersey  regiment,  forty- 
four  years  after  the  bloody  battle  of  Salem 
Church,  put  up  on  its  site  a  monument  to 
their  dead,  on  one  side  of  which  was  a  tab 
let  to  the  memory  of  the  "brave  Alabama 
boys,"  who  were  their  opponents  in  that 
fight.  One  of  those  "Alabama  boys"  wrote 
the  story  of  that  battle  for  the  archives  of 
his  own  State,  and  the  State  of  New  Jersey 
has  published  it  in  her  archives,  as  a  fair 
account  of  the  battle. 

The  author  has  attempted  to  approach 
his  subject  in  a  spirit  like  this,  and  while 
he.  hopes  to  be  absolutely  fair,  he  is  per 
fectly  aware  that  he  sees  things  from  a 
Southern  view-point.  For  this,  however, 
no  apology  is  needed.  Truth  is  many-sided 
and  must  be  seen  from  every  direction. 

Nearly  all  the  school-books  dealing  with 
the  period  here  treated  of,  and  now  con- 

9 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

isidered   as   authority,   have   been    written 
jfrom  a  Northern  stand-point;  and  many  of 
/the  extended  histories  that  are  most  widely 
read  seem  to  the  writer  to  be  more  or  less 
I  partisan,  although   the  authors   were   ap 
parently  quite  unconscious  of  it.     Attempts 
made  here  to  point  out  some  of  the  errors 
in  these  books  are,  as  is  conceived,  in  the 
interests  of  history. 

Of  course  it  is  important  that  readers 
should  know  the  stand-point  of  an  author 
who  writes  at  this  day  of  events  as  recent 
as  those  here  treated  of.  Dr.  Albert  Bush- 
nell  Hart,  professor  of  history  in  Harvard 
University,  in  the  preface  to  his  "Slavery 
and  Abolition"  (Harper  Brothers,  1906), 
says  of  himself:  "It  is  hard  for  a  son  and 
grandson  of  abolitionists  to  approach  so  ex 
plosive  a  question  with  impartiality."  Fol 
lowing  this  example,  the  writer  must  tell 
that  he  was  born  in  the  South,  of  slave- 
holding  parents,  three  years  after  the  Abo 
lition  crusade  began  in  1831.  Growing  up 
in  the  South  under  the  stress  of  that  cru 
sade,  he  maintained  all  through  the  war, 
in  which  he  was  a  loyal  Confederate  sol 
dier,  the  belief  in  which  he  had  been  edu- 

10 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

cated — that  slavery  was  right,  morally  and 
economically. 

One  day,  not  long  after  Appomattox,  he 
told  his  father  he  had  reached  the  conclu 
sion  that  slavery  was  wrong.  The  reply 
was,  to  the  writer's  surprise,  that  his 
mother  in  early  life  had  been  an  avowed 
emancipationist;  that  she  (who  had  lived 
until  the  writer  was  sixteen  years  old)  had 
never  felt  ai^liberty_to  discuss, slavery  after 
the  rise  of  the  jiew  abolitionists  and  the 
Nat  Jurnerlnsurrection ;  and  then  followed 
the  further  information  that  when,  in  1846, 
the  family  removed  from  South  Carolina  to 
Alabama.  Greenville,  Ala.,  was  chosen  for  a 
home  because  it  was  thought  that  the  dan 
ger  from  slave  insurrections  would  be  less 
there  than  in  one  of  the  richer  "black  coun 
ties." 

What  a  creature  of  circumstances  man 
is!  The  writer's  belief  about  a  great  moral 
question,  his  home,  his  school-mates,  and 
the  companions  of  his  youth,  were  all  deter 
mined  by  a  movement  begun  in  Boston, 
Massachusetts,  before  he  was  born  in  the 
far  South! 

With  a  vivid  personal  recollection  of  the 
ii 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

closing  years  of  the  great  anti-slavery  cru 
sade  always  in  his  mind,  the  writer  has 
studied  closely  many  of  the  histories  deal 
ing  with  that  movement,  and  he  has  found 
quite  a  consensus  of  opinion  among  North 
ern  writers — a  view  tRat  "has  even  been 
sometimes^  accepted  in  the  South — that  it 
was  not  so  much  the  fear  of  insurrections, 
created  by  Abolition  agitation,  that  shut 
off  discussion  in  the  South  about  the  right- 
(  fulness  of  slavery  as  it  was  the  invention 
\  of  the  cotton-gin,  that  made  cotton  growing 
\and  slavery  profitable.  The  cotton-gin  was 
invented  in  1792,  and  was  in  common  use 
years  before  the  writer's  mother  was  born. 
A  native  of,  she  grew  to  maturity  entirely 
in,  the  South,  and  in  1830  was  an  avowed 
emancipationist.  The  subject  was  then 
being  freely  discussed. 

The  author  has  ventured  to  relate  in  the 
pages  that  follow  this  introduction  two  or 
three  incidents  that  were  more  or  less  per 
sonal,  in  the  hope  that  their  significance  may 
be  his  sufficient  excuse. 

And  now,  having  spoken  of  himself  as  a 
Southerner,  the  author  thinks  it  but  fair, 
when  invoking  for  the  following  pages  fair 

12 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

consideration,  to  add  that,  since  1865,  he 
has  never  ceased  to  rejoice  that  slavery  is 
no  more,  and  that  secession  is  now  only  an 
academic  question;  and,  further,  that  he 
has,  since  Appomattox,  served  the  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States  for  twenty  years 
as  loyally  as  he  ever  served  the  Confederacy. 
He  therefore  respectfully  submits  that  his 
experiences  ought  to  render  him  quite  as 
well  qualified  for  an  impartial  consideration 
of  the  anti-slavery  crusade  and  its  conse 
quences  as  are  those  who  have  never,  either 
themselves  or  through  the  eyes  of  their  an 
cestors,  seen  more  than  one  side  of  those 
questions.  Certain  he  is,  in  his  own  mind, 
that  this  Union  has  now  no  better  friend 
than  is  he  who  submits  this  little  study, 
conscious  of  its  many  shortcomings,  claim 
ing  for  it  nothing  except  that  it  is  the  re 
sult  of  an  honest  effort  to  be  fair  in, every 
statement  of  facts  and  in  the  conclusions 
reached. 

Not  much  effort  has  been  made  in  the  di 
rection  of  original  research.  Facts  deemed 
sufficient  to  illustrate  salient  points,  which 
alone  can  be  treated  of  in  a  short  story, 
have  been  found  in  published  documents, 

13 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

*  and  other  facts  have  been  purposely  taken, 
most  of  them,  from  Northern  writers ;  and 
the  authorities  have  been  duly  cited.  These 
facts  have  been  compressed  into  a  small 
compass,  so  that  the  book  may  be  avail 
able  to  such  students  as  have  not  time  for  a 
more  extended  examination. 

Of  the  results  of  the  crusade  of  the  Abo 
litionists,  and  the  consequent  sectional  war, 
George  Ticknor  Curtis,  one  of  New  Eng 
land's  distinguished  biographers,  says  in  his 
"Life  of  Buchanan,"  vol.  II,  p.  283: 

"It  is  cause  for  exultation  that  slavery 
Vio  longer  exists  in  the  broad  domain  of  this 
republic — that  our  theory  of  government 
and  practice  are  now  in  complete  accord. 
'But  it  is  no  cause  for  national  pride  that 
we  did  not  accomplish  this  result  without 
the  cost  of  a  million  of  precious  lives  and 
untold  millions  of  money." 


CHAPTER  I 
SECESSION  AND  ITS  DOCTRINE 

JOHN  FISKE  has  said  in  his  school  his 
tory:  "Under  the  government  of  Eng 
land  before  the  Revolution  the  thirteen 
commonwealths  were  independent  of  one 
another,  and  were  held  together  juxtaposed, 
rather  than  united,  only  through  their  al 
legiance  to  the  British  Crown.  Had  that 
allegiance  been  maintained  there  is  no  tell 
ing  how  long  they  might  have  gone  on  thus 
disunited." 

They  won  their  independence  under  a 
very  imperfect  union,  a  government  im 
provised  for  the  occasion.  The  "Articles 
of  Confederation,"  the  first  formal  constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States  of  America,  were 
not  ratified  by  Maryland,  the  last  to  ratify, 
until  in  1781,  shortly  before  Yorktown.  In 
1787  the  thirteen  States,  each  claiming  to 
be  still  sovereign,  came  together  in  conven 
tion  at  Philadelphia  and  formed  the  pres- 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

ent  Constitution,  looking  to  "a  more  per 
fect  union."  The  Constitution  that  created 
this  new  government  has  been  rightly  said 
to  be  "  the  most  wonderful  work  ever  struck 
off,  at  a  given  time,  by  the  brain  and  pur 
pose  of  man."1  And  so  it  was,  but  it  left 
unsettled  the  great  question  whether  a 
State,  if  it  believed  that  its  rights  were 
denied  to  it  by  the  general  government, 
could  peaceably  withdraw  from  the  Union. 
The  Federal  Government  was  given  by  the 
Constitution  only  limited  powers,  powers 
that  it  could  not  transcend.  Nowhere  on 
the  face  of  that  Constitution  was  any  right 
expressly  conferred  on  the  general  govern 
ment  to  decide  exclusively  and  finally^  upon 
the  extent^of  jhe  jDowers  granted  tojt.  If 
?\any  such  right  had  been  clearly  given,  it 
\  is,  certain  that  many  of  the  States  would 
(not  have  entered  into  the  Union.  As  it 
was,  the  Constitution  was  only  adopted  by 
eleven  of  the  States  after  months  of  dis 
cussion.  Then  the  new  government  was 
inaugurated,  with  two  of  the  States,  Rhode 
Island  and  North  Carolina,  still  out  of  the 
Union.  They  remained  outside,  one  of 

*  Gladstone,  "Kin  Beyond  the  Sea." 

16 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

them   for   eighteen  months  and  the  other 
for  a  year. 

The  States  were  reluctant  to  adopt  the 
Constitution,  because  they  were  jealous  of, 
and  did  not  mean  to  give  up,  the  right  of 
self-government. 

^The  fran^rs  of  the  Constitution  knew 
that  the  question  of  the  right  of  a  State  to 
secede  was  tfy&s  left  unsettled.  They  knew, 
tfto,  that  tftis  might  give  trouble  in  the  fu- 
tftre.  ^  Their  hope  was  that,  as  the  advan 
tages  jof  tne  Union  became,  in  process  of 
time,  «mor&  and  more  apparent,  the  Union 
\youl(£  grow  in  favor  and  come  to  be  re- 
gfcrdefl  in  ^he  minds  and  hearts  of  the  peo- 

le  a$  indissoluble. 


tfye  beginning  of  the  government 
tnere^were  many,  including  statesmen  of 
great  influence,  who  continued  to  be  jeal- 
of^the  right  of  self-government,  and  in- 
,te(f  that  no  powers  should  be  exercised 
the  Federal  Government  except  such  as 
Jvere-^ery  clearly  granted  in  the  Constitu- 
jJRn.  ^These  soon  became  a  party  and  called 
themselves  Republicans.  Some  thirty  years 
later  they  called  themselves  Democrats. 
Those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  believed  in 

I* 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

construing  the  grants  of  power  in  the  Con 
stitution  liberally  or  broadly,  called  them 
selves 


Washington  was  a  Federalist,  but  such 
was  his  influence  that  the  dispute  between 
the  Republicans  and  the  Federalists  about 
the  meaning  of  the  Constitution  did  not, 
during  his  administration,  assume  a  serious 
aspect;  but  when  a  new  president,  John 
Adams,  also  a  Federalist,  came  in  with  a 
congress  in  harmony  with  him,  the  Repub 
licans  made  bitter  war  upon  them.  France, 
then  at  war  with  England,  was  even  wa 
ging  what  has  been  denominated  a  "quasi 
war"  upon  us,  to  compel  the  United  States, 
under  the  old  treaty  of  the  Revolution,  to 
take  her  part  against  England;  and  Eng 
land  was  also  threatening  us.  Plots  to  force 
the  government  into  the  war  as  an  ally  of 
France  were  in  the  air. 

Adams  and  his  followers  believed  in  a 
strong  and  spirited  government.  To  strike 
a  fatal  blow  at  the  plotters  against  the 
public  peace,  and  to  crush  the  Republicans 
at  the  same  time,  Congress  now  passed  the 
fa  mous  alien  and  sedition  1  a  ws  . 

One  o^ffffiinenlaws,  J  uhw  1798,  gave 
18 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

the  President,  for  two  years  from  its  pas 
sage,  power  to  order  out  of  the  country,  at 
his  own  willy  and  without  "trial  by  jury'9  or 
other  "process  of  law"  any  alien  he  deemed 
dangerous  to  the  peace  and  safety  of  the 
United  States. 

The  sedition  law,  July  14,  1798,  made 
criminal  any  unlawful  conspiracy  to  oppose 
any  measure  of  the  government  of  the 
United  States  "which  was  directed  by  prop 
er  authority,"  as  well  as  also  any  "false  and 
scandalous  accusations  against  the  Govern 
ment,  the  President,  or  the  Congress." 

The  opportunity  of  the  Republicans  had 
come.  They  determined  to  call  upon  the 
country  to  condemn  the  alien  and  sedition 
laws,  and  at  the  presidential  election  in 
1800  the  Federalists  received  their  death 
blow.  The  party  as  an  organization  sur 
vived  that  election  only  a  few  years,  and  in 
localities  the  very  name,  Federalist,  later 
became  a  reproach. 

The  Republicans  began  their  campaign 
against  the  alien  and  sedition  laws  by  a  se 
ries  of  resolutions,  which,  drawn  by  Jeffer 
son,  were  passed  by  the  Kentucky  legislature 
in  November,  1798.  Other  quite  similar 

19 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

resolutions,  drawn  by  Madison,  passed  the 
Virginia  assembly  the  next  year;  and  these 
together  became  the  celebrated  Kentucky 
land  Virginia  resolutions  of  I798-9.1  The 
[alien  and  sedition  laws  were  denounced  in 
:hese  resolutions  for  the  exercise  of  powers 
lot  delegated  to  the  general  government. 
^Adverting  to  the  sedition  law,  it  was  de 
clared  that  no  power  over  the  freedom  of 
religion,  freedom  of  speech,  or  freedom  of 
the  press  had  been  given.  On  the  con 
trary,  it  had  been  expressly  provided  by 
the  Constitution  that  "Congress  shall  make 
no  law  respecting  an  establishment  of  relig 
ion,  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof, 
or  abridging  the  freedom  of  speech,  or  of  the 
press.'9 

1  Warfield,  in  his  "Kentucky  Resolutions  of  1798,"  relates  that 
John  Breckenridge  introduced  the  Kentucky  and  John  Taylor, 
of  Caroline,  moved  the  Virginia  resolutions.  In  1814  Taylor 
made  it  known  that  Madison  was  the  author  of  the  Virginia  re 
solves,  but  not  till  1821  did  Jefferson  admit  his  authorship  of  the 
Kentucky  resolutions.  Jefferson  was  Vice-President  when  they 
were  drawn,  and  it  would  have  been  thought  unseemly  for  him 
to  appear  openly  in  a  canvass  against  the  President,  but  by  cor 
respondence  with  his  friends  he  "gradually  drew  out  a  program 
of  action"  (Warfield,  p.  17).  The  Kentucky  Resolutions  were 
sent  by  the  Governor  to  the  Legislatures  of  the  other  States,  ten 
of  which,  being  controlled  by  the  Federalists,  are  known  to  have 
declared  against  them  (Warfield,  p.  115).  But  of  course  the 
resolutions  were  canvassed  by  the  public  before  the  presidential 
election  of  1800. 

2O 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

The  first  of  the  Kentucky  resolutions  was 
as  follows: 

"Resolved,  That  the  several  States  composing  the 
United  States  of  America,  are  not  united  on  the 
principle  of  unlimited  submission  to  their  general 
government,  but  that  by  compact,  under  the  style 
and  title  of  a  constitution  for  the  United  States,  and 
of  amendments  thereto,  they  constituted  a  general 
government  for  specific  purposes,  delegated  to  that 
Government  certain  definite  powers,  reserving,  each 
State  to  itself,  the  residuary  mass  of  right  to  their 
own  self-government;  and  that  whensoever  the  gen 
eral  government  assumes  undelegated  powers  its  acts 
are  unauthoritative,  void,  and  of  no  effect:  That  to 
this  compact  each  State  acceded  as  a  State,  and  is  an 
integral  party,  its  co-States  forming,  as  to  itself,  the 
other  party:  That  the .gDYernrrieiiU created  by  this 
compact,  was  not  made  the  exclusive  or  final  judge  of 
the  extent  of  the  powers  delegated  to  itself,  since  that 
would  have  made  its  direction,  and  not  the  Consti 
tution,  the  measure  of  its  powers;  but  that,  as  in  all 
other  cases  of  compact  among  parties  having  no  com 
mon  judge,  each  party  has  a  right  to  judge  for  itself  as 
well  of  infractions  as  of  the  mode  and  measure  of  re 
dress." 

Undoubtedly  it  is  from  the  famous  reso 
lutions  of  1798-9  that  the  secessionists  of  a 
later  date  drew  their  arguments.  The  au 
thors  of  these  celebrated  resolutions  were, 

21 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

both  of  them,  devoted  friends  of  the  Union 
they  had  helped  to  construct.  Why  should 
they  announce  a  theory  of  the  Constitution 
that  was  so  full  of  dangerous  possibilities  ? 

The  answer  is,  they  were  announcing  the 
theory  upon  which  the  States,  or  at  least 
many  of  the  States,  had  ten  years  before 
ratified  the  Constitution.  A  crisis  in  the 
life  of  the  new  government  had  now  come. 
Congress  had  usurped  powers  not  given; 
it  had  exercised  powers  that  had  been  pro 
hibited,  and  the  government  was  enforcing 
the  obnoxious  statutes  with  a  high  hand. 
Dissatisfaction  was  intense. 

Jefferson  and  Madison  were  undoubtedly 
Republican  partisans,  Jefferson  especially; 
but  it  is  equally  certain  that  they  were  both 
friends  of  the  Union,  and  as  such  they  con 
cluded,  with  the  lights  before  them,  that 
the  wise  course  would  be  to  submit  to  the 
!  people,  in  ample  time  for  full  consideration, 
before  the  then  coming  presidential  election, 
}a  full,  clear,  and  comprehensive  exposition 
;  of  the  Constitution  precisely  as  they,  and 
,  as   the   people,   then   understood   it.     This 
they  did  in  the  resolutions  of  1798  and  1799, 
and  the  very  same  voters  who  had  created 

22 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

the  Constitution  of  1789,  now,  with  their 
sons  to  aid  them,  cjidorsed  these  resolutions 
in  the  election  of  1800,  which  had  been  laid 
before  them  by  the  legislatures  of  two  Re 
publican  States  as  a  correct  construction 
of  that  instrument. 

The  Republicans  under  Jefferson  came 
into  power  with  an  immense  majority.  The 
georjle  were  ^atisfied  with  the  Constitution 
as  it  had  been  construed  in  the  election  of 


,  and  the  country  under  control  of  the 
Republicans  was  happy  and  prosperous  for 
three  decades.  Then  the  party  in  power 
began  to  split  into  Nation^MR£pu^licans 
and  Democratic  Republicans.  ThtTNational 
Republicans  favored  a  liberal  constructiog> 
of  the  Constiturion^ii3^cTme~WKigs  ;  the 
Democratic  Republicans  dropped  the  name 
Republican  and  became  Democrats. 

The  foregoing  sketch  has  been  given  with 
no  intent  to  write  a  political  history,  bul 
only  to  show  with  what  emphasis  the  Amer- 
icanjeople  condemned  all  violations  of  the 
Constitution  up  to  the  time  when,  in 


our  story  of  the  Abolitionists  is  to  begin. 
•The  sketch  has  also  served  to  explain  the 
•theory  of  State-rights,  as  it  was  held  in 
\  23 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

fsarly  days,  and  later,  by  the  Southern  peo- 
pie. 
Whether  the  union  of  the  States  under 
the  Constitution  as  expounded  by  the  Ken 
tucky  and  Virginia  resolutions  would  sur 
vive  every  trial  that  was  to  come,  remained 
to  be  seen.  The  question  was  destined  to 
perplex  Mr.  Jefferson  himself,  more  than 
once. 

Indeed,  even  while  Washington  was  Pres 
ident  there  had  been  disunion  sentiment  in 
Congress.  In  1794  the  celebrated  Virgin 
ian,  John  Taylor,  of  Caroline,  shortly  after 
he  had  expressed  an  intention  of  publicly 
resigning  from  the  United  States  Senate, 
was  approached  in  the  privacy  of  a  com 
mittee  room  by  Rufus  King,  senator  from 
New  York,  and  Oliver  Ellsworth,  a  senator 
from  Massachusetts,  both  Federalists,  with 
a  proposition  for  a  dissolution  of  the  Union 
by  mutual  consent,  the  line  of  division  to 
be  somewhere  from  the  Potomac  to  the 
Hudson.  This  was  on  the  ground  "that  it 
was  utterly  impossible  for  the  Union  to 
continue.  That  the  Southern  and  the  East 
ern  people  thought  quite  differently/'  etc. 
Taylor  contended  for  the  Union,  and  noth- 

24 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

ing  came  of  the  conference,  the  story  of 
which  remained  a  secret  for  over  a  hun 
dred  years.1 

"In  the  winter  of  1803-4,  immediately 
after,  and  as  a  consequence  of,  the  acqui 
sition  of  Louisiana,  certain  leaders  of  the 
Federal  party  conceived  the  project  of  the 
dissolution  of  the  Union  and  the  establish 
ment  of  a  Northern  Confederacy,  the  justi 
fying  causes  to  those  who  entertained  it, 
that  the  acquisition  of  Louisiana  to  the 
Union  transcended  the  constitutional  powers 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States;  that 
it  created,  in  fact,  a  new  confederacy  to 
which  the  States,  united  by  the  former  com 
pact,  were  not  bound  to  adhere;  that  it  was 

1  Taylor  was  so  deeply  impressed  by  the  conference,  which  was 
protracted,  that  two  days  later,  May  n,  1794,  he  made  an  ex 
tended  note  of  it  which  he  sent  to  Mr.  Madison.  At  the  foot  of 
f  his  note  Taylor  says,  among  other  things:  "He  (T.)  is  thoroughly 
convinced  that  the  design  to  break  up  the  Union  is  contem 
plated.  The  assurance,  the  manner,  the  earnestness,  and  the 
countenances  with  which  the  idea  was  uttered,  all  disclosed  the 
most  serious  intention.  It  is  also  probable  that  K.  (King)  and 
E.  (Ellsworth)  having  heard  that  T.  (Taylor)  was  against  the 
(adoption  of)  the  Constitution  have  hence  imbibed  a  mistaken 
opinion  that  he  was  secretly  an  enemy  of  the  Union,  and  con 
ceived  that  he  was  a  fit  instrument  (as  he  was  about  retiring)  to 
infuse  notions  into  the  anti-federal  temper  of  Virginia,  consonant 
to  their  views." — "Disunion  Sentiment  in  the  Congress  in  1794" 
(with  fac-simile  of  Taylor  memorandum),  by  Gaillard  Hunt,  Edi 
tor  of  Writings  of  James  Madison.  Lowdermilk  Co.,  Washing 
ton,  D.  C.,  1905. 

25 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

oppressive  of  the  interests  and  destructive 
of  the  influence  of  the  northern  section  of 
the  Confederacy,  whose  right  and  duty  it 
was  therefore  to  secede  from  the  new  body 
politic,  and  to  constitute  one  of  their  own/' 

This  project  did  not  assume  serious  pro 
portions. 

John  Fiske  in  his  school  history  says: 
"John  Quincy  Adams,  a  supporter  of  the 
embargo  act  of  1807,  privately  informed 
President  Jefferson  (in  February,  1809)  that 
further  attempts  to  enforce  it  in  the  New 
England  States  would  be  likely  to  drive  them 
to  secession.  Accordingly,  the  embargo  was 
repealed,  and  the  non-intercourse  act  sub 
stituted  for  it." 

The  spirit  of  nationality  was  yet  in  its 
infancy,  threats  of  secession  were  common, 
and  they  came  then  mostly  fromj!^gw_  Eng 
land.  These  threats  \vereln  no  wise  con 
nected  with  slavery;  agitators  had  not  then 
made  slavery  a  national  issue;  the  idea  of 
separation  was  prompted  by  the  fear  that 
power  in  the  councils  of  the  Union  would 
pass  into  the  hands  of  other  sections. 

1  C.  F.  Robertson,  "The  Louisiana  Purchase,"  etc.    "  Papers  of 
the  American  Association,"  vol.  I,  pp.  262,  263. 

26 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Massachusetts  was  heard  from  again  in 
1811,  when  the  State  of  Louisiana,  the  first 
to  be  carved  from  the  Louisiana  purchase, 
asked  to  come  into  the  Union.  In  dis 
cussing  the  bill  for  her  admission,  Josiah 
Quincy  said:  "Why,  sir,  I  have  already 
heard  of  six  States,  and  some  say  there  will 
be  at  no  great  distance  of  time  more.  I  have 
also  heard  that  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  will 
be  far  to  the  east  of  the  contemplated  em 
pire.  ...  It  is  impossible  that  such  a  power 
could  be  granted.  It  was  not  for  these  men 
that  our  fathers  fought.  It  was  not  for 
them  this  Constitution  was  adopted.  You 
have  no  authority  to  throw  the  rights  and 
liberties  and  property  of  this  people  into 
hotchpot  with  the  wild  men  on  the  Mis 
souri,  or  with  the  mixed,  though  more 
respectable,  race  of  Anglo-Hispano-Gallo- 
Americans  who  bask  in  the  sands  in  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  .  .  .  /  am  com 
pelled  to  declare  it  as  my  deliberate  opinion 
that,  if  this  bill  passes,  the  bonds  of  the  Union 
are  virtually  dissolved;  that  the  States  which 
compose  it  are  free  from  their  moral  obliga 
tions;  and  that,  as  it  will  be  the  right  of  all,  so  it 
be  the  duty  of  some,  to  prepare  definitely 
27 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

for  a  separation — amicably,  if  they  can;  vio 
lently,  if  they  must." 

June  15,  1813,  the  Massachusetts  legis 
lature  endorsed  the  position  taken  in  this 
speech.1 

Later,  in  1814,  a  convention  of  represen 
tative  New  England  statesmen  met  at  Hart 
ford,  to  consider  of  secession  unless  the  non- 
intercourse  act,  which  also  bore  hard  on 
New  England,  should  be  repealed;  but  the 
war  then  pending  was  soon  to  close,  and 
the  danger  from  that  quarter  was  over. 

But  secession  was  not  exclusively  a  New 
England  doctrine.  "When  the  Constitu 
tion  was  adopted  by  the  votes  of  States  in 
popular  conventions,  it  is  safe  to  say  there 
was  not  ajtnanjnjhe  country,  from  Wash 
ington  and  Hamilton,  on~tKe  one  side,  to 
George  Clinton  and  George  Mason,  on  the 
other,  whojegarded  the  new  system  as  any- 
.  thing  but  jm  experiment,  entered  into  by 
the  States,  and  f rom  wETcri  each  and  every 
State  had  the  right  to  withdraw,  a  right 
which  wasjyery  likely  to  be  exercised." 2 
A  As  late  as  1844  the  threatTof  secession 

1  "American  State  Documents  and  Federal  Relations,"  p.  21. 

2  Henry  Cabot  Lodge's  "Webster,"  p.  176. 

28 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

was  to  come  again  from  Massachusetts. 
The  great  State  of  Texas  was  applying  for 
admission  to  the  Union.  But  Texas  was  a 
slave  State;  Abolitionists  had  now  for  thir 
teen  years  been  arousing  in  the  old  Bay 
State  a  spirit  of  hostility  against  the  exist 
ence  of  slavery  in  her  sister  States  of  the 
South,  and  in  1844  the  Massachusetts  legis 
lature  resolved  that  "the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts,  faithful  to  the  compact 
between  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
according  to  the  plain  meaning  and  intent 
in  which  it  was  understood  by  them,  is  sin 
cerely  anxious  for  its  preservation ;  but  that 
it  is  determined,  as  it  doubts  not  other  States 
are,  to  submit  to  undelegated  powers  in  no 
body  of  men  on  earth"  and  that  "the  proj 
ect  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  unless  ar 
rested  at  the  threshold,  may  tend  to  drive 
these  States  into  a  dissolution  of  the  Union" 

This  was  just  seventeen  years  before  the 
Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  began  to  arm 
her  sons  to  put  down  secession  in  the  South! 

The  Southern  reader  must  not,  however, 
conclude  from  this  startling  about-face  on 
the  question  of  secession,  that  the  people 
of  Massachusetts,  and  of  the  North,  did 

29 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

not,  in  1861,  honestly  believe  that  under  the 
Constitution  the  Union  was  indissoluble, 
or  that  the  North  went  to  war  simply  for 
the  purpose  of  perpetuating  its  power  over 
the  South.  Such  a  conclusion  would  be 
rossly  unjust.  The  spirit  of  nationality, 
veneration  of  the  Union,  was  a  growth,  and, 
after  it  had  fairly  begun,  a  rapid  growth. 
It  grew,  as  our  country  grew  in  prestige 
and  power.  The  splendid  triumphs  of  our 

/ships  at  sea,  in  the  War  of  1812,  and  our 
victory  at  New  Orleans  over  British  regu- 

/  lars,  added  to  it;  the  masterful  decisions 
/  of  our  great  Chief  Justice  John  Marshall, 
pointing  out  how  beneficently  our  Federal 
Constitution  was  adapted  to  the  preserva 
tion  not  only  of  local  self-government  but 
of  the  liberties  of  the  citizen  as  well ;  peace 
with,  and  the  respect  of,  foreign  nations; 
free  trade  between  the  people  of  all  sections, 
and  abounding  prosperity — all  these  things 
created  a  deep  impression,  and  Americans 
began  to  hark  back  to  the  words  of  Wash 
ington  in  his  farewell  address:  "The  unity  of 
our  government,  which  now  constitutes  you 
one  people,  is  also  dear  to  you.  It  is  justly 
so,  for  it  is  a  main  pillar  in  the  edifice  of 
30 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

your  real  independence,  the  support  of  your 
tranquillity  at  home,  your  peace  abroad,  of 
your  safety,  of  your  prosperity,  of  that  very 
liberty  which  you  so  highly  prize." 

But  far  and  away  above  every  other 
single  element  contributing  to  the  develop 
ment  of  Union  sentiment  was  the  wonder 
ful  speech  of  Daniel  Webster,  January  26, 
i83<5"'WIBf!l?^eDateTiritne  United  States 
Senate  with  Hayne,  of  South  Carolina. 
Hayne  was  eloquently  defending  States' 
rights,  and  his  argument  was  unanswerable 
if  his  premise  was  admitted,  that,  as  had 
been  theretofore  conceded,  the  Constitution 
was  a  compact  between  the  States.  Webster 
saw  this  and  he  took  new  ground;  the 
Constitution  was,  he  contended,  not  a  com 
pact,  but  the  formation  of  a  government. 
His  arguments  were  like  fruitful  seed  sown 
upon  a  soil  prepared  for  their  reception. 
No  speech  delivered  in  this  country  ever 
created  so  profound  an  impression.  It  was 
the  foundation  of  a  new  school  of  political 
thought.  It  concluded  with  this  eloquent 
peroration:  "When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned 
to  behold  for  the  last  time  the  sun  in  heaven, 
may  I  not  see  him  shining  on  the  broken 

31 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

and  dishonored  fragments  of  a  once  glori 
ous  Union;  on  States  dissevered,  discord 
ant,  belligerent;  on  a  land  rent  with  civil 
feuds,  or  drenched,  it  may  be,  in  fraternal 
blood!  Let  their  last  feeble  and  lingering 
glance  rather  behold  the  gracious  ensign 
of  the  republic,  now  known  and  honored 
throughout  the  earth,  still  full  high  ad 
vanced,  its  arms  and  trophies  streaming  in 
their  original  lustre,  not  a  stripe  erased  or 
polluted,  not  a  single  star  obscured,  bear 
ing  for  its  motto  no  such  miserable  inter 
rogatory  as  'What  is  all  this  worth?'  nor 
those  other  words  of  delusion  and  folly, 
'Liberty  first  and  Union  afterwards,'  but 
everywhere,  spread  all  over  with  living  light, 
blazing  on  all  its  ample  folds,  as  they  float 
over  the  sea  and  over  the  land,  and  in  every 
wind  under  the  whole  heavens,  that  other 
sentiment,  dear  to  every  American  heart— 
'Liberty  and  UnioiL_JiQW__and  forever,  one 
and  inse  Table." 

or  many  years  every  school-house  in  the 
land  resounded  with  these  words.  By  1861 
they  had  been  imprinted  on  the  minds  and 
had  sunk  into  the  hearts  of  a  whole  genera 
tion.  Their  effect  was  incalculable. 
32 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  secession  res 
olution  of  the  Massachusetts  legislature  of 
1844  was  passed  fourteen  years  after  Web 
ster's  speech,  but  the  Garrisonians  had  then 
been  agitating  the  slavery  question  within 
her  borders  for  fourteen  years,  and  the  old 
State  was  now  beside  herself  with  excite 
ment. 

There  was  another  great  factor  in  the 
j  rapid  manufacture  of  Union  sentiment  at 
the  North  that  had  practically  no  existence 
J  at  the  South.  It  was  immigration. 

The  new-comers  from  over  the  sea  knew 
nothing,  and  cared  less,  about  the  history 
of  the  Constitution  or  the  dialectics  of  se 
cession.  They  had  sought  a  land  of  liberty 
that  to  them  was  one  nation,  with  one  flag 
flying  over  it,  and  in  their  eyes  secession 
was  rebellion.  Immigrants  to  America, 
practically  all  settling  in  Northern  States, 
were  during  the  thirty  years,  1831-1860, 
4>9IO>59o;  and  these  must,  with  their  nat 
ural  increase,  have  numbered  at  least  six 
millions  in  1860.  In  other  words,  far  more 
than  one-fourth  of  the  people  of  the  North 
in  1860  were  not,  themselves  or  their  fathers, 
in  the  country  in  the  early  days  when  the 

33 


I 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

doctrine  of  States'  rights  had  been  in  the 
ascendant;  and,  as  a  rule,  to  these  new  peo 
ple  that  old  doctrine  was  folly. 

fin  the  South  the  situation  was  reversed. 
Slavery  had  kept  immigrants  away.  The 
whites  were  nearly  all  of  the  old  revolution 
ary  stock,  and  had  inherited  the  old  ideas. 
Still,  love  of  and  pride  in  the  Union  had 
grown  in  them  too.  Nor  were  the  South 
erners  all  followers  of  Jefferson.  From  the 
earliest  days  much  of  the  wealth  and  intel 
ligence  of  the  country,  North  and  South, 
had  opposed  the  Democracy,  first  as  Feder 
alists  and  later  as  Whigs.  In  the  South 
the  Whigs  have  been  described  as  "a  fine 
upstanding  old  party,  a  party  of  blue  broad- 
jdoth,  silver  buttons,  and  a  coach  and  four." 
[It  was  not  until  anti-slavery  sentiment  had 
>egun  to  array  the  North,  as  a  section, 
igainst  the  South,  that  Southern  Whigs 
>egan  to  look  for  protection  to  the  doc- 
Tine  of  States'  rights. 

Woodrow  Wilson  says,  in  "Division  and 
Reunion/'  p.  47,  of  Daniel  Webster's  great 
speech  in  1830:  "The  Nojth»was  now  be 
ginning  to  insist  upon  a  <dational  govern 
ment;  the  South  was  continuing  to  insist 

34 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

upon  the  original  understanding  of  the  Con 
stitution;  that  was  all/' 

And  in  those  attitudes  the  two  sections 
stood  in  1 860-6 1,  one  upon  the  modern 
theory  of  an  indestructible  Union ;  the  other 
upon  the  old  idea  that  States  had  the  right 
to  secede  from  the  Union. 

In  1848  there  occurred  in  Ireland  the 
"  Rebellion  of  the  Young  Irishmen."  Among 
the  leaders  of  that  rebellion  were  Thomas 
F.  Meagher  and  John  Mitchel.  Both  were 
banished  to  Great  Britain's  penal  colony. 
Both  made  their  way,  a  few  years  later,  to 
America.  Both  were  devotees  of  liberty, 
both  men  of  brilliant  intellect  and  high 
culture.  Meagher^  .settled  in  the  North, 
Mitchel  in  the  South.  This  was  about  1855. 
Each  from  his  new  stand-point  studied  the 
history  and  the  Constitution  of  his  adopted 
country.  Meagher,  when  tjie  war  between 
the  North  and  South  came  on7)becam£_a 
generaUnj^heJJnion  a£my^____Milshel  entered 
the  civil  service  of^e  Confederacy  and  his 
son  died  a  Confederate  soldier. 

The  Union  or  Confederate  partisan  who 
has  been  taught  that  his  side  was  "eter 
nally  right,  and  the  other  side  eternally 

35 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 


wrong/'  should  consider  the  story  of  these 
two  "Young  Irishmen." 

How  fortunate  it  is  that  the  ugly  ques 
tion  of  secession  has  been  settled,  and  will 
never  again  divide  Americans,  or  those  who 
come  to  America  ! 


CHAPTER  II 
EMANCIPATION  PRIOR  TO  1831 

IN  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centu 
ries,  Dutch,  French,  Portuguese,  Span 
ish,  English,  and  American  vessels  brought 
many  thousands  of  negroes  from  Africa,  and 
sold  them  as  slaves  in  the  British  West 
Indies  and  in  the  British-American  colonies. 
William  Goodell,  a  distinguished  Abolition 
ist  writer,  tells  us1  that  "in  the  importation 
of  slaves  for  the  Southern  colonies  the  mer 
chants  of  New  England  competed  with  those 
of  New  York  and  the  South"  (which  never 
had  much  shipping).  "They  appear  indeed 
to  have  outstripped  them,  and  to  have 
at  one  time  the  profits 


of  this  detestable  trade.  Boston,  Salem,  and 
Newburyport  in  Massachusetts,  and  New 
port  and  Bristol  in  Rhode  Island,  amassed, 
in  the  persons  of  a  few  of  their  citizens,  vast 
sums  of  this  rapidly  acquired  and  ill-gotten 
wealth."1 

1  "Slavery  and  Anti-Slavery,"  3d  ed.,  1885. 
37 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

The  slaves  coming  to  America  went 
chiefly  to  the  Southern  colonies,  because 
there  only  was  slave  labor  profitable.  The 
laws  and  conditions  under  which  these  ne 
groes  were  sold  in  the  American  colonies 
were  precisely  the  same  as  in  the  West  In 
dies,  except  that  the  whites  in  the  islands, 
so  far  as  is  known,  never  objected,  whereas 
the  records  show  that  earnesirprotests  came 
from  Virginia1  and  also  from  Qeorgia2  and 
North  Carolina.3  The  King  of  England  was 
interested  in  the  profits  of  the  iniquitous 
trade  and  all  protests  were  in  vain. 

Of  the  rightfulness,  however,  of  slavery 
itself  there  was  but  little  question  in  the 
minds  of  Christian  peoples  until  the  clos 
ing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Then 
the  cruelties  practised  by  ship-masters  in 
the  Middle  Passage  attracted  attention,  and 
then  came  gradually  a  revolution  in  pub 
lic  opinion.  This  revolution,  in  which  the 
churches  took  a  prominent  part,  originated 
in  England,  but  it  soon  swept  over  Amer 
ica  also,  both  North  and  South. 

England    abolished    the    slave    trade  in 

1  Am.  Archives,  4th  series,  vol.  I,  p.  696. 
»/£.,  p.  1136.  3Ib.,  p.  735. 

38 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

1807.  The  United  States  followed  in  1808; 
the  Netherlands  in  1814;  France  in  1818; 
Spain  in  1820;  Portugal  in  1830.  The  great 
Wilberforce,  Buxton,  and  others,  who  had 
brought  about  the  abolition  of  the  slave 
trade  in  England,  continued  their  exertions 
in  favor  of  the  slave  until  finally,  in  1833, 
Parliament  abolished  slavery  in  the  British 
West  Indies,  appropriating  twenty  millions 
sterling  ($100,000,000)  as  compensation  to 
owners — this  because  investments  in  slaye 
property  had  been  made  under  the  sanQ- 
tion  of  existing  law. 

Great  Britain,  loaded  with  an  unprec 
edented  debt  and  with  a  grinding  taxation, 
contracted  a  new  debt  of  a  hundred  mil 
lions  of  dollars  to  give  freedom,  not  to 
Englishmen,  but  to  the  degraded  African. 
This  was  not  an  act  of  policy,  but  the  work 
of  statesmen.  Parliament  but  registered 
the  edict  of  the  people.  The  English  na 
tion,  with  one  heart  and  one  voice,  under 
a  strong  Christian  impulse  and  without 
distinction  of  rank,  sex,  party,  or  religious 
names,  decreed  freedom  to  the  slave.  I 
know  not  that  history  records  a  national 
act  so  disinterested,  so  sublime." 

39 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

So  wrote  Dr.  Channing,  the  great  New 
England  pulpit  orator,  in  his  celebrated  let 
ter  on  Texas  annexation,  to  Henry  Clay,  in 

1837. 

While  the  rightfulness  of  slavery  was 
being  discussed  in  England,  the  American 
conscience  had  also  been  aroused,  and  eman 
cipation  was  making  progress  on  this  side 
of  the  water. 

Emancipation  was  an  easy  task  in  the 
Northern  States,  where  slaves  were  few, 
their  labor  never  having  been  profitable, 
and  by  1804  the  last  of  these  States  had 
provided  for  the  ultimate  abolition  of  sla 
very  within  its  borders.  But  the  problem 
was  more  difficult  in  the  Southern  States, 
where  the  climate  was  adapted  to  slave 
labor.  There  slaves  were  numerous,  and 
slavery  was  interwoven,  economically  and 
socially,  with  the  very  fabric  of  existence. 
Naturally,  it  occurred  to  thoughtful  men 
that  there  ought  to  be  some  such  solution 
as  that  which  was  subsequently  adopted 
in  England,  and  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  so  highly  extolled  by  Dr.  Channing— 
emancipation  of  the  slaves  with  compensa 
tion  to  the  owners  by  the  general  govern- 
40 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

ment.     The  difficulty  in  our  country  was 
that    the    Federal^Constitution    conferred 
upon  tjbe^_Federal  Governmejit_no_  power 
liver  slavery  lathe  States — no  power  to 
emancipate  slaves  or  compensate  owners; 
and  that  for  the  individual  States  where  the 
negroes  were  numerous  the  problem  seemed 
too  big.     Free  negroes  and  whites  in  great 
r  numbers,  it  was  thought,  could  not  live  to- 
<  gether.     To  get  rid  of  the  negroes,  if  they 
I  should  be  freed,  was  for  the  States  a  very 
(  serious,  if  not  an  unsurmountable  task. 

On  the  seventeenth  of  January,  1824,  the 
following  ^resolutions,  proposed  as  a  solu 
tion  of  the  problem,  were  passed  by  the 
legislajtm^ojjQhip  i1 

Resolved,  That  the  consideration  of  a  system 
providing  for  the  gradual  emancipation  of  the  peo 
ple  of  color,  held  in  servitude  in  the  United  States, 
be  recommended  to  the  legislatures  of  the  several 
States  of  the  American  Union,  and  to  the  Congress 
of  the  United  States. 

Resolved,  That,  in  the  opinion  of  the  general 
assembly,  a  sysjtem  ofjForeigo  colonization,  with 
correspondent  measures,  might  be  adopted  that 
would  in  due  time  effect  the  entire  emancipation 
of  the  slaves  of  our  country  without  any  violation 

1  "  State  Documents  on  Federal  Relations,"  Ames,  pp.  203-4. 
41 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

of  the  national  compact,  or  infringement  _of  the 
rights  of  individuals;  by  the  passage  of  a  law  by  the 
general  government  (vntb_the_consent_of  the_  slave- 
holding  States)  which  would  provide  that  all  children 
of  persons  now  held  in  slavery,  born  after  the  passage 
of  the  law,  should  be  free  at  the  age  of  twenty-one 
years  (being  supported  during  their  minority  by 
the  persons  claiming  the  service  of  their  parents), 
provided  they  then  consent  to  be  transported  to  the 
intended  place  of  colonization.  Also: 

Resolved,  That  it  is  expedient  that  such  a  system 
should  be  predicated  upon  the  principle  thatJ:he_eyil 
of  slavery  is  a  natjonal  ^one,  and  that  the  people 
and  the  States  of  the  Union  ought  mutually  tp  par 
ticipate  in  the  duties  and  burthens jofjgmoving  it. 

Resolved,  That  His  Excellency  the  Governor  be 
requested  to  forward  a  copy  of  the  foregoing  reso 
lutions  to  His  Excellency  the  Governor  of  each  of 
the  United  States,  requesting -him  to  lay  the  same 
before  the  legislature  thereof;  and  that  His  Excel 
lency  will  also  forward  a  like  copy  to  each  of  our 
senators  and  representatives  in  Congress,  request 
ing  their  co-operation  in  all  national  measures  hav 
ing  a  tendency  to  effect  the  grave  object  embraced 
therein. 

By  June  of  1825  £ight  other  Northern 
States  had  endorsed  the  proposition,  Penn 
sylvania,  Vermont,  New  Jersey,  Illinois, 
Connecticut,  Massachusetts.  Six^  of  the 
slave-holding  States  emphatically  disap- 
42 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

proved  of  the  suggestion,  viz.,  Georgia, 
South  Carolina,  Missouri,  Mississippi, 
Louisiana,  and  Alabama.1 

Reasons  which  in  great  part  influenced  al 
the  Southern  States  thus  rejecting  the  propo 
sition  may  be  gathered  from  the  following 
words  of  Governor  Wilson,  of  South  Caro 
lina,  in  submitting  the  resolutions:  "A  firm 
determination  to  resist,  at  the  threshold 
every  invasion  of  our  domestic  tranquillity : 
and  to  preserve  our  sovereignty  and  indepen 
dence  as  a  State,  is  earnestly  recommended. "2* 

The  resolutions  required  of  the  Southern 
States  a  complete  surrender  in  this  regard 
of  their  reserved  rights;  they  feared  what 
Governor  Wilson  called  "the  overwhelming 
powers  of  the  general  government,"  and 
were  unwilling  to  make  the  admission  re 
quired,  that  the  slavery  m  the  South  was  a 
question  for  the  nation. 

Another  reason  was  that,  although  there 
was  a  quite  common  desire  in  the  Southejn 
States  to  get  rid  of_slavery,  the  majority 
sentiment  doubtless  was  not  yet  ready  for 
the  step. 

Basing  this  plan  on  the  "consent  of  the 

1  Ames,  p.  203.  2  Ib.,  p.  206. 

43 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

•slave-holding  States/'  as  the  Ohio  legisla 
ture  did,  was  an  acknowledgment  that  the 
North  had  no  power  over  the  matter;  while 
the  proposition  to  share  in  the  expense  of 
transporting  the  negroes,  after  they  were 
manumitted,  seems  to  be  a  recognition  of 
the  joint  responsibility  of  both  sections  for 
the  existence  of  slavery  in  the  South.  How 
ever  that  may  be,  the  generous  concurrence 
of  nine  of  the  thirteen  Northern  States  in 
dicates  how  kindly  the  temper  of  the  North 
toward  the  South  was  before  the  rise  of  the 

i "  New  Abolitionism  "  in  1 83 1 .  Had  emanci 
pation  been,  under  the  Federal  Constitu 
tion,  a  naticMialjmd^not  a  local  Jiiiestion,. 
it  is  possible  that  slavery  might  have  been 
abolished  in  America,  as  it  was  in  the  mother 
country,  peacefully  and  with  compensation 
to  owners. 

The  Ohio  idea  of  freeing  and  at  the  same 
time  colonizing  the  slaves,  was  no  doubt 
suggested  by  the  scheme  of  the  African 
Colonization  Society.  This  Colonization 
Society  grew  out  of  a  resolution  passed  by 
the  General  Assembly  of  Virginia,  Decem 
ber  23,  1816.  Its  purpose- was  to  rid  the 
country  of  such  free  negroes  and  subse- 
44 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

quently  manumitted  slaves  as  should  be 
willing  to  go  to  Liberia,  where  a  home  was  se 
cured  for  them,  and  a  government  set  up  that 
was  to  be  eventually  controlled  by  the  negro 
from  America.  The  plan  was  endorsed  by 
Georgia  in  1817,  Maryland  in  1818,  Tenn 
essee  in  1818,  and  Vermont  in  1819.* 

The  Colonization  Society  was  composed 
of  Southern  and  Northern  philanthropists 
and  statesmen  of  the  most  exalted  char 
acter.  Among  its  presidents  were,  at  times, 
President  Monroe  and  ex-President  Madi 
son.  Chief  Justice  Marshall  was  one  of 
its  presidents.  Colonization,  while  relieving 
America,  was  also  to  give  the  negro  an 
opportunity  for  self-government  and  self- 
development  in  his  native  country,  aided  at 
the  outset  by  experienced  white  men,  and 
Abraham  Lincoln,  when  he  was  eulogizing 
the  dead  Henry  Clay,  one  of  the  eloquent 
advocates  of  the  scheme,  seemed  to  be  in 
love  with  the  idea  of  restoring  th,e  poor 
African  to  that  land  from  which  he  had 
been  rudely  snatched  by  the  rapacious  white 
man.  The  society,  with  much  aid  from  phi 
lanthropists  and  some  from  the  Federal  Gov- 

195. 

45 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

eminent,  was  making  progress  when,  from 
1831  to  1835,  the  Abolitionists  halted  it.1 
VThey  got  the  ears  of  the  negro  and  per- 
jsuaded  him  not  to  go  to  Liberia.  Its  friends 
thought  the  enterprise  would  stimulate 
emancipation  by  furnishing  a  home  for  such 
negroes  as  their  owners  were  willing  to 
manumit;  but  the  new  friends  of  the  negro 
told  him  it  was  a  trick  of  the  slave-holder, 
and  intended  to  perpetuate  slavery — it  was 
banishment.  And  Dr.  Hart  now,  in  his 
"  Abolition  and  Slavery,"  calls  it  a  move 
for  the  "expatriation  of  the  negro." 

All  together  only  a  few  thousand  negroes 
went  to  Liberia.  The  enterprise  lagged, 
and  finally  failed,  partly  because  of  opposi 
tion,  but  chiefly  because  the  negroes  were 
slothful  and  incapable  of  self-government. 
The  word  came  back  that  they  were  not 
prospering.  For  a  time,  while  white  men 
were  helping  them  in  their  government,  the 
outlook  for  Liberia  had  more  or  less  prom 
ise  in  it.  When  the  whites,  to  give  the  ne 
groes  their  opportunity  for  self-develop 
ment  withdrew  their  case  was  hopeless.2 

1  See  Garrison's  "Garrison." 

3  See  article  in  Independent,  1906,  Miss  Mahony. 

46 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

In  1828,  while  emancipation  was  still 
being  freely  canvassed  North  and  South, 
Benjamin  Lundy,  an  Abolition  editor  in 
charge  of  The  Genius  of  Emancipation, 
then  being  published  at  Baltimore,  in  a 
slave  State,  went  to  Boston  to  "stir  up" 
the  Northern  people  "  to  the  work  of  abol 
ishing  slavery  in  the  South."  Dr.  Chan- 
ning,  who  has  been  previously  quoted, 
wrote  a  letter  to  Daniel  Webster  on  the 
28th  of  May,  1828,  in  which,  after  reciting 
the  purpose  of  Lundy,  and  saying  that  he 
was  "aware  how  cautiously  exertions  are  to 
be  made  for  it  in  this  part  of  the  country," 
it  being  a  local  question,  he  said:  "It  seems 
to  me  that,  before  moving  in  this  matter,  we 
ought  to  say  to  them  (our  Southern  breth 
ren)  distinctly,  'We  consider  slavery  as  your 
calamity,  not  your  crime,  and  we  will  share 
with  you  the  burden  of  putting  an  end  to  it. 
We  will  consent  that  the  public  lands  shall 
be  appropriated  to  this  object;  or  that  the 
general  government  shall  be  clothed  with  the 
'power  to  apply  a  portion  of  revenue  to  it.' 

"I  throw  out  these  suggestions  merely  to 
illustrate  my  views.  We  must  first  let  the 
Southern  States  see  that  we  are  their 
47 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

friends  in  this  affair;  that  we  sympathize 
with  them  and,  from  principles  of  patriotism 
and  philanthropy,  are  willing  to  share  the 
toil  and  expense  of  abolishing  slavery,  or,  I 
fear,  our  interference  will  avail  nothing."  1 
Mr.  Webster  never  gave  out  this  letter  until 
February  15,  1851.-' 

In  less  than  three  years  after  that  letter 
was  written,  Lundy's  friend,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  started  in  Boston  a  crusade 
against  slavery  in  the  South,  on  the  ground 
that  instead  of  being  the  "calamity"  as 
Dr.  Channing  deemed  it  to  be,  it  was  the 
"crime"  of  the  South.  jjajd_  no  such  ex- 
2isgera.ting  sectional^  c_ry  as^jhis  ever  been 
raised,  the  story  told iajhisHttje Lbook  would 
have  been  very  different  from.thaJLwhich  is_ 
"to  follow.  Even  Spain,  the  laggard^  of  na 
tions,  since  that  day  has  abolished  slavery 
in  her  colonies.  Brazil  long  ago  jell  into 
line,  and  it  is  impossible  for^ne  not  blinded 
by  the  sectional  strife  of  the  pasn  now  to 

^conceive"  that  the  Southern^  States  of.  this 
Union,  whose  people  in  1830  were  among 

~the  foremost  of  the  world  in  all  the  elements 

1  "Webster's  Works,"  vol.  V,  pp.  366-67,  1851. 
3  Ib.,  ed.  1851,  vol.  V,  pp.  266-67. 

48 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

of  Christian  civilization,  would  not  long, 
long  ago,  jfjgft  to  themselves^  have  found 
some  means  by  which  to  rid  themselves  of 
an  institution  condemned  by  the  public 
sentiment  of  the  world  and  even_then  de- 
plored_bY_the  Southerners  themselves. 

The  crime,  if  crime  it  was,  of  slavery  in 
the  South  in  1830  was  one  for  which  the  two 
sections  of  the  Union  were  equally  to  blame. 
Abraham  Lincoln  said  in  his  debate  with 
Douglas  at  Peoria,  Illinois,  October  15, 
1858:  "When  Southern  people  tell  us  they 
are  no  more  responsible  for  slavery  than 
we  are,  I  acknowledge  the  fact.  When  it 
is  said  that  the  institution  exists,  and  that 
it  is  very  difficult  to  get  rid  of  it,  in  any  sat 
isfactory  way,  I  can  understand  and  appre 
ciate  the  saying.  I  surely  do  not  blame 
them  for  not  doing  what  I  would  not  know 
how  to  do  myself." 

Prior  to  the  rise  of  the  Abolitionists  in 
1831,  emancipationists  South  had  been  free 
to  grapple  with  conditions  as  they  found 
them.  What  they  and  what  the  people  of 
the  North  had  accomplished  we  may  gather 
from  the  United  States  census  reports.  The 

1  "  The  Negro  Problem,"  Pickett,  1809. 
49 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

tables  following  are  taken  from  "Larned's 
History  of  Ready  Reference/'  vol.  V.  The 
classifications  are  his.  We  have  numbered 
three  of  his  tables,  for  the  sake  of  reference, 
and  have  added  columns  4  and  5,  calculated 
from  Larned's  figures,  to  show  "excess  of 
free  blacks"  and  "increase  of  free  blacks, 
South. 

Let  the  reader  assume  as  a  fact,  which 
will  perhaps  not  be  questioned,  that  "free 
blacks"  in  the  census  means  freedmen  and 
their  increase,  and  these  tables  tell  their  own 
story,  a  story  to  which  must  be  added  the 
statement  that  slaves  in  the  South  had  been 
freed  only  by  voluntary  sacrifices  of  owners. 

It  will  be  noted  that  in  1790  the  total 
"blacks"  in  the  North  was  67,479,  and, 
although  emancipation  in  these  States  had 
begun  some  years  before,  the  excess  of 
"free  blacks"  in  the  South  was  over  5,000. 
Also  that  at  every  succeeding  census,  down 
to  and  including  that  of  1830,  the  "excess 
of  free  blacks"  increased  with  considerable 
regularity  until  1830,  when  that  excess  is 

44,547- 

There  was  always  in  the  South,  prior  to 

1831,  an  active  and  freely  expressed  eman- 
50 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 


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00          i 

THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

cipation  sentiment.  But  there  was  not 
enough  of  it  to  influence  legislation.  In  all 
but  three  or  four  of  these  States,  emancipa 
tion  was  made  difficult  by  laws  which, 
among  other  conditions,  required  that  slayes 
after  being  freed  should  leave  the  State. 

Emancipation  in  the  North  had  not  been 
completed  in  1830.  Professor  Ingram,  pres 
ident  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  says  in 
his  "History  of  Slavery,"  London,  1895, 
p.  184:  "The  Northern  States — beginning 
with  Vermont  in  1777  and  ending  with  New 
Jersey  in  1804 — either  abolished  slavery 
or  adopted  measures  to  effect  its  gradual 
abolition  within  their  boundaries.  But  the 
principal  operation  of  (at  least)  the  latter 
change  was  to  transfer  Northern  slaves  to 
Southern  markets." 

There  had  been  in  1820  an  angry  dis 
cussion  in  Congress  about  the  admission 
of  Missouri — with  or  without  slavery— 
which  was  finally  settled  by  the  Missouri 
Compromise.  This  dispute  over  the  ad 
mission  of  Missouri  is  often  said  to  have 
been  the  beginning  of  the  sectional  quarrel 
that  finally  ended  in  secession ;  but  the  con 
troversy  over  Missouri  and  that  begun  by 
52 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

the  "New  Abolitionists'*  in  1831  were  en 
tirely  distinct.  They  were  conducted  on 
different  plans. 

In  the  Missouri  controversy  the  only 
questions  were  as  to  the  expediency  and 
constitutionality  of  denying  to  a  new  State 
the  right  to  enter  the  Union,  with  or  with 
out  slavery,  as  she  might  choose.  The  en 
tire  dispute  was  settled  to  the  satisfaction 
of  both  sections  by  an  agreement  that 
States  thereafter,  south  of  36°  30',  might 
enter  the  Union  with  or  without  slavery; 
and  nobody  denied,  during  all  that  discussion 
about  Missouri,  or  at  any  time  previous  to 
183 1,  that  every  citizen  was  bound  to  maintain 
the  Constitution  and  all  laws  passed  in  pur 
suance  of  it,  including  the  fugitive  slave  law. 

"The  North  submitted  at  that  time 
(1828)  to  the  obligations  imposed  upon  it 
by  the  fugitive  slave-catching  clause  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  fugitive  slave  law  of 
I793-"1  So  say  the  biographers  of  William 
Lloyd  Garrison  for  the  purpose  of  estab 
lishing,  as  they  afterwards  do,  their  claim 
that  Garrison  conducted  a  successful  revolt 
against  that  provision  of  the  Constitution. 

1  Garrison's  "Garrison,"  vol.  I,  p.  113. 

53 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

What  strengthens  the  statement  that  the 
North  in  1828  submitted  without  protest 
to  the  "fugitive  slave-catching  clause  of  the 
Constitution,"  is  that  the  Compromise  Act 
of  1820  contained  a  provision  extending  the 
fugitive  slave  law  over  the  territory  made 
free  by  the  act,  while  it  should  continue 
to  be  territory,  and  until  there  should  be 
formed  from  it  States,  to  which  the  existing 
law  would  automatically  apply.  Every 
subsequent  nullification  of  the  fugitive  slave 
laws  of  the  United  States,  whether  by  gov 
ernors  or  state  legislatures,  was  therefore  a 
palpable  violation  of  a  provision  that  was  of 
the  essence  of  the  Missouri  Compromise. 

The  South  was  content  with  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  and  from  that  date,  1820,  until 
the  rise  of  the  "New  Abolitionists,"  slavery 
was  in  all  that  region  an  open  question. 
Judge  Temple  says  in  his  "Covenanter, 
Cavalier,  and  Puritan,"  p.  208:  "In  1826,  of 
the  143  emancipation  societies  in  the  United 
States,  103  were  in  the  South." 

The  questions  for  Southern  emancipa 
tionists  were :  How  could  the  slaves  be  freed, 
and  in  what  time?  How  about  compensa 
tion  to  owners?  Where  could  the  freed 
54 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

slaves  be  sent,  and  how  ?  And,  if  deporta 
tion  should  prove  impossible,  what  system 
could  be  devised  whereby  the  two  races 
could  dwell  together  peacefully?  These 
were  indeed  serious  problems,  and  required 
time  and  grave  consideration. 

"Who  can  doubt,"  says  Mr.  Curtis,  to 
quote  once  more  his  "Life  of  Buchanan," 
"that  all  such  questions  could  have  been 
satisfactorily  answered,  if  the  Christianity 
of  the  South  had  been  left  to  its  own  time 
and  mode  of  answering  them,  and  without 
any  external  force  but  the  force  of  kindly, 
respectful  consideration  and  forebearing 
Christian  fellowship?"  1 

But  this  was  not  to  be. 

George  Ticknor  Curtis's  "Life  of  Buchanan,"  vol.  II,  p.  283. 


55 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  NEW  ABOLITIONISTS 

ON  the  first  day  of  January,  1831,  there 
came  out  in  Boston  a  new  paper,  The 
Liberator,  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  editor. 
iThat  was  the  beginning,  historians  now  gen- 
jerally  agree,  of  "New  Abolitionism."  The 
editor  of  the  new  paper  was  the  founder  of 
the  new  sect. 

Benjamin  Lundy  was  a  predecessor  of 
Garrison,  on  much  the  same  lines  as  those 
pursued  by  the  latter.  Lundy  had  previously 
formed  many  Abolition  societies.  The  Phi- 
lanthropist  of  March,  1828,  estimated  the 
number  of  anti-slavery  societies  as  "up 
wards  of  130,  and  most  of  them  in  the  slave 
States,  and  of  Lundy's  formation,  among 
the  Quakers."  *  But  Garrison  became  the 
leader  and  Lundy  the  disciple. 

Garrison  was  a  man  of  pleasing  personal 
appearance,  abstemious  in  habits,  and  of  re 
markable  energy  and  will  power.  He  was  a 

1  Garrison's  "Garrison,"  vol.  I. 

56 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

vigorous  and  forceful  writer.  Denunciation 
was  his  chief  weapon,  and  he  had  "a  genius 
for  infuriating  his  antagonists."  The  follow 
ing  is  a  fair  specimen  of  his  style.  Speaking 
of  himself  and  his  fellow-workers  as  the 
"soldiers  of  God,"  he  said:  "Their  feet  are 
shod  with  the  preparation  of  the  gospel  of 
peace.  .  .  .  Hence,  when  smitten  on  one 
cheek  they  turn  the  other  also,  being  de 
famed  they  entreat,  being  reviled  they 
bless,"  etc.  And  on  that  same  page,1  and  in 
the  same  prospectus,  showing  how  he 
"blesses"  those  who,  as  he  understands,  are 
outside  of  the  "Kingdom  of  God,"  he  says: 
"All  without  are  dogs  and  sorcerers,  and 
.  .  .  and  murderers,  and  idolaters,  and 
whatsoever  loveth  a  lie." 

Mr.  Garrison  had  no  perspective,  no 
sense  of  relation  or  proportion.  In  his  eye 
the  most  humane  slave-holder  was  a  wicked 
monster.  He  had  a  genius  for  organiza 
tion,  and  a  year  after  the  first  issue  of 
The  Liberator  he  and  his  little  body  of 
brother  fanatics  had  grown  into  the  New 
England  Anti-Slavery  Society. 

The  new  sect  called  themselves  for  a  time 

1  /£.,  Vol.  II,  p.  2O2. 

57 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  "New  Abolitionists/'  because  their  doc 
trines  were  new.  The  principles  upon  which 
this  organization  was  to  be  based  were  not 
all  formulated  at  once.  The  key-note  was 
sounded  in  Garrison's  "Address  to  the  Pub 
lic"  in  the  first  number  of  The  Liberator: 

I  shall  strenuously  contend  for  the  immediate  en 
franchisement  of  our  slave  population.  I  shall  be 
as  harsh  as  truth  and  as  uncompromising  as  justice 
on  this  subject.  /  do  not  wish  to  think  or  speak  or 
write  with  moderation. 

In  an  earlier  issue,  after  denouncing  sla 
very  as  a  "damning  crime/'  the  editor  said: 
" Therefore  my  efforts  shall  be  directed  to 
the  exposure  of  those  who  practise  it" 

The  substance  of  Garrison's  teachings 
was  that  slavery,  anywhere  in  the  United 
States,  was  the  concern  of  aft,  and  that  it 
was  to  be  put  down  by  making  not  only 
slavery  but  also  the  slave-holder  odious. 
And,  further,  it  was  the  slave,  not  the 
slave-owner,  who  was  entitled  to  compen 
sation. 

Thus  the  distinctive  features  of  the  new 
crusade  were  to  be  warfare  upon  the  personal 
character  of  every  slave-holder  and  the  con- 

58 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

fiscation  of  his  property.  It  was,  too,  the 
beginning  of  that  sectional  war  by  people  of 
the  North  against  the  existence  of  slavery 
in  the  South,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
deprecated  by  Dr.  Channing  in  his  letter 
three  years  before  to  Mr.  Webster. 

The  new  sect  began  by  assailing  slavery 
in  States  other  than  their  own,  and  very 
soon  they  were  openly  denouncing  the  Con 
stitution  of  their  country  because  under  it 
slavery  in  those  sections  was  none  of  their 
business;  and  of  course  they  repudiated 
the  Missouri  Compromise  absolutely,  the 
essence  of  that  compromise  being  that  sla 
very  was  the  business  of  the  States  in  which 
it  existed. 

It  was  a  part  of  their  scheme  to  send  cir 
culars  depicting  the  evils  of  slavery  broad 
cast  through  the  South ;  and  they  were  sent 
especially  to  the  free  negroes  of  that  section. 

"In  1820,"  says  Dr.  Hart  in  his  "Slavery 
and  Abolition,"  "at  Charleston  (South  Car 
olina),  Denmark  Vesey,  a  free  negro,  made 
an  elaborate  plot  to  rise,  massacre  the  white 
population,  seize  the  shipping  in  the  harbor, 
and,  if  hard  pressed,  to  sail  away  to  the  West 
Indies.  One  of  the  negroes  gave  evidence, 

59 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 


Vesey  was  seized,  duly  tried,  and  with 
thirty-four  others  was  hanged." 1 

This  plot,  so  nearly  successful,  was  fresh 
in  the  minds  of  Southerners  when  the  Abo 
litionists  began  their  programme,  and  natu 
rally,  the  South  at  once  took  the  alarm — an 
alarm  that  was  increased  by  the  massacre, 
in  the  Nat  Turner  insurrection,  of  sixty-one 
men,  women,  and  children,  which  took  place 
in  Virginia  seven  months  after  the  first  issue 
of  The  Liberator.  One  of  Turner's  lieutenants 
is  stated  to  have  been  a  free  negro.  This 
insurrection  the  South  attributed  to  The 
Liberator.  Professor  Hart  says  a  free  negro 
named  Walker  had  previously  sent  out  to 
the  South,  from  Boston,  a  pamphlet,  "the 
tone  of  which  was  unmistakable,"  and  that 
"this  pamphlet  is  known  to  have  reached 
Virginia,  and  may  possibly  have  influenced 
the  Nat  Turner  insurrection."1 

If  this  surmise  be  correct,  knowledge  that 
Walker,  a  free  negro,  had  been  responsible 
for  the  Turner  insurrection,  would  have 
lessened  neither  the  guilt  of  the  Abolition 
ists  nor  the  fears  of  the  Southerners. 

But  in  1832  Abolition  agitation  and  the 

1  Hart's  "Slavery  and  Abolition,"  p.  163.          -  Ib.,  pp.  217-20. 
60 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

fears  of  insurrection  had  not  as  yet  entirely 
stifled  the  discussion  of  slavery  in  the  South. 
A  debate  on  slavery  took  place  that  year  in 
the  Virginia  Assembly,  the  immediate  cause 
of  which  was  no  doubt  the  Turner  insurrec 
tion.  The  members  of  that  body  had  not 
been  elected  on  any  issue  of  that  character. 
The  discussion  thus  precipitated  shows, 
therefore,  the  state  of  public  opinion  in 
Virginia  on  slavery.  Of  this  debate  a  dis 
tinguished  Northern  writer  says : 1 

"In  the  year  1832  there  was,  nowhere  in 
the  world,  a  more  enlightened  sense  of  the 
wrong  and  evil  of  slavery  than  there  was 
among  the  public  men  and  people  of  Vir 
ginia." 

In  the  Assembly  of  that  year  Mr.  Ran 
dolph  brought  forward  a  bill  to  accomplish 
gradual  emancipation.  Mr.  Curtis  continues : 

"No  member  of  the  House  defended  slav 
ery.  .  .  .  There  could  be  nothing  said  any 
where,  there  had  been  nothing  said  out  of 
Virginia,  stronger  and  truer  in  deprecating 
the  evils  of  slavery,  than  was  said  in  that 
discussion,  by  Virginia  gentlemen,  debating 

luLife  of  James  Buchanan,"  George -Ticknor  Curtis,  vol.  II, 
pp.  277-78. 

61 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

in  their  own  legislature,  a  matter  that  con 
cerned  themselves  and  their  people." 

The  bill  was  not  pressed  to  a  vote,  but 
the  House,  by  a  vote  of  65  to  38,  declared 
"  that  they  were  profoundly  sensible  of  the 
great  evils  arising  from  the  condition  of  the 
colored  population  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  were  induced  by  policy,  as  well  as 
humanity,  to  attempt  the  immediate  re 
moval  of  the  free  negroes;  but  that  further 
action  for  the  removal  of  the  slaves  should 
await  a  more  definite  development  of  public 
opinion" 

Mr.  Randolph,  who  was  from  the  large 
slave-holding  county  of  Albemarle,  was  re- 
elected  to  the  next  assembly. 

But  when  the  early  summer  of  1835  had 
come  the  fear  of  insurrection  had  created 
such  wide-spread  terror  throughout  the 
whole  South  that  every  emancipation  so 
ciety  in  that  region  had  long  since  closed 
its  doors;  and  now  the  Abolitionists  were 
sending  South  their  circulars  in  numbers. 
Many  were  sent  to  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,1  where  fifteen  years  before 2  the 

1  Referred  to  in  "  Life   of  Andrew  Jackson,"  W.  G.  Sumner, 
p.  350.  2  Hart,  supra. 

62 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

free  negro,  Denmark  Vesey,  had  laid  the 
plot  to  massacre  the  whites,  that  had  been 
discovered  just  in  time  to  prevent  its  con 
summation. 

The  President,  Andrew  Jackson,  in  his 
next  message  to  Congress,  December,  1835, 
called  their  "attention  to  the  painful  excite 
ment  produced  in  the  South  by  attempts  to 
circulate  through  the  mails  inflammatory  ap 
peals  addressed  to  the  passions  of  the  slaves, 
in  prints  and  in  various  sorts  of  publications 
calculated  to  stimulate  them  to  insurrection 
and  produce  all  the  horrors  of  a  servile  war" 

The  good  people  of  Boston  were  now 
thoroughly  aroused.  They  had  from  the 
first  frowned  on  the  Abolition  movement. 
Garrison  was  complaining  that  in  all  the 
city  his  society  could  not  "hire  a  hall  or  a 
meeting-house."  The  Abolition  idea  had 
been  for  a  time  thought  chimerical  and 
therefore  negligible.  Later,  civic,  business, 
social,  and  religious  organizations  had  all  of 
them  in  their  several  spheres  been  earnest 
and  active  in  their  opposition;  now  it 
seemed  to  be  time  for  concerted  action. 

In  Garrison's  "Garrison"  (vol.  I,  p.  495), 
we  read  that  "the  social,  political,  religious 

63 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

and  intellectual  elite  of  Boston  filled  Fan- 
euil  Hall  on  the  afternoon  of  Friday,  Au 
gust  3,  1835,  to  frame  an  indictment  against 
their  fellow-citizens." 

This  "indictment"  the  Boston  Transcript 
reported  as  follows: 

Resolved,  That  the  people  of  the  United  States  by 
the  Constitution  under  which,  by  the  Divine  bless 
ing,  they  hold  their  most  valuable  political  privi 
leges,  have  solemnly  agreed  with  each  other  to 
leave  to  their  respective  States  the  jurisdiction  per 
taining  to  the  relation  of  master  and  slave  within 
their  boundaries,  and  that  no  man  or  body  of  men, 
except  the  people  of  the  governments  of  those  States, 
can  of  right  do  any  act  to  dissolve  or  impair  the 
obligations  of  that  contract. 

Resolved,  That  we  hold  in  reprobation  all  attempts, 
in  whatever  guise  they  may  appear,  to  coerce  any 
of  the  United  States  to  abolish  slavery  by  appeals 
to  the  terror  of  the  master  or  the  passions  of  the  slave. 

Resolved,  That  we  disapprove  of  all  associations 
instituted  in  the  non-slave-holding  States  with  the 
intent  to  act,  within  the  slave-holding  States,  on 
the  subject  of  slavery  in  those  States  without  their 
consent.  For  the  purpose  of  securing  freedom  of 
individual  thought  they  are  needless — and  they  af 
ford  to  those  persons  in  the  Southern  States,  whose 
object  is  to  effect  a  dissolution  of  the  Union  (if  any 
such  there  may  be  now  or  hereafter),  a  pretext  for 
the  furtherance  of  their  schemes. 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Resolved,  That  all  measures  adopted,  the  natural 
and  direct  tendency  of  which  is  to  excite  the  slaves  of 
the  South  to  revolt,  or  of  spreading  among  them  a  spirit 
of  insubordination,  are  repugnant  to  the  duties  of 
the  man  and  the  citizen,  and  that  where  such  meas 
ures  become  manifest  by  overt  acts,  which  are  rec 
ognizable  by  constitutional  laws,  we  will  aid  by  all 
means  in  our  power  in  the  support  of  those  laws. 

Resolved,  That  while  we  recommend  to  others  the 
duty  of  sacrificing  their  opinions,  passions  and  sym 
pathies  upon  the  altar  of  the  laws,  we  are  bound  to 
show  that  a  regard  to  the  supremacy  of  those  laws 
is  the  rule  of  our  conduct — and  consequently  to 
deprecate  all  tumultuous  assemblies,  all  riotous  or 
violent  proceedings,  all  outrages  on  person  and  prop 
erty,  and  all  illegal  notions  of  the  right  or  duty  of 
executing  summary  and  vindictive  justice  in  any 
mode  unsanctioned  by  law.  .  \ 

The  allusion  in  the  last  resolution  is  to  a 
then  recent  lynching  of  negroes  in  Missis 
sippi  charged  with  insurrection. 

In  speaking  to  these  resolutions,  Harrison 
Gray  Otis,  a  great  conservative  leader,  de 
nounced  the  Abolition  agitators,  accusing 
them  of  "wishing  to  'scatter  among  our 
Southern  brethren  firebrands,  arrows,  and 
death,9  and  of  attempting  to  force  Aboli 
tion  by  appeals  to  the  terror  of  the  mas 
ters  and  the  passions  of  the  slaves,"  and 

65 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

decrying  their  "measures,  the  natural  and 
direct  tendency  of  which  is  to  excite  the 
slaves  of  the  South  to  revolt,"  etc. 

Another  of  the  speakers,  ex-Senator  Peleg 
Sprague,  said  (p.  496,  Garrison's  "Garri 
son")  that  "if  their  sentiments  prevailed 
it  would  be  all  over  with  the  Union,  which 
would  give  place  to  two  hostile  confeder 
acies,  with  forts  and  standing  armies." 

These  resolutions  and  speeches,  viewed  in 
the  light  of  what  followed,  read  now  like 
prophecy. 

It  is  a  familiar  rule  of  law  that  a  contem 
poraneous  exposition  of  a  statute  is  to  be 
given  extraordinary  weight  by  the  courts, 
the  reason  being  that  the  judge  then  sitting 
knows  the  surrounding  circumstances.  That 
Boston  meeting  pronounced  the  deliberate 
judgment  of  the  most  intelligent  men  of 
Boston  on  the  situation,  as  they  knew  it  to 
be  that  day;  it  was  in  their  midst  that  The 
Liberator  was  being  published ;  there  the  new 
sect  had  its  head-quarters,  and  there  it  was 
doing  its  work. 

Quite  as  strong  as  the  evidence  furnished 
by  that  great  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  is  the 
testimony  of  the  churches. 
66 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

The  churches  and  religious  bodies  in 
America  had  heartily  favored  the  general 
anti-slavery  movement  that  was  sweeping 
over  all  America  between  1770  and  1831, 
while  it  was  proceeding  in  an  orderly  manner 
and  with  due  regard  to  law. 

In  1812  the  Methodist  General  Confer 
ence  voted  that  no  slave-holder  could  con 
tinue  as  a  local  elder.  The  Presbyterian 
General  Assembly  in  1818  unanimously  re 
solved  that  "slavery  was  a  gross  violation 
of  the  most  precious  and  moral  rights  of 
human  nature/'  etc. 

These  bodies  represented  both  the  North 
and  the  South,  and  this  paragraph  shows 
what  was,  and  continued  to  be,  the  general 
attitude  of  American  churches  until  after 
the  Abolitionists  had  begun  their  assault 
on  both  slavery  in  the  South  and  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States,  which  pro 
tected  it.  Then,  in  view  of  the  awful  social 
and  political  cataclysm  that  seemed  to  be 
threatened,  there  occurred  a  stupendous 
change.  We  learn  from  Hart  that  Garri 
son  "soon  found  that  neither  minister  nor 
church  anywhere  in  the  lower  South  continued 
(as  before)  to  protest  against  slavery;  that 

6? 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  cloth  in  the  North  was  arrayed  against 
him;  and  that  many  Northern  divines 
vigorously  opposed  him."  Also  that  Moses 
Stuart,  professor  of  Hebrew  in  Andover 
Theological  Seminary;  President  Lord,  of 
Dartmouth  College,  and  Hopkins,  the  Epis 
copal  bishop  of  Vermont,  now  became  de 
fenders  of  slavery.  "The  positive  opposi 
tion  of  churches  soon  followed." 

And  then  we  have  cited,  condemnations 
of  Abolitionism  by  the  Methodist  Confer 
ence  of  1836,  by  the  New  York  Methodist 
Conference  of  1838,  by  the  American  Board 
of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions,  by 
the  American  Home  Missionary  Society, 
the  American  Bible  Society,  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church,  and  the  Baptists.  See 
for  these  statements,  Hart,  pp.  211-12. 

The  import  of  all  this  is  unmistakable; 
and  this  "about-face"  of  religious  organiza 
tions  on  the  question  of  the  morality  of 
slavery  has  no  parallel  in  all  the  history  of 
Christian  churches.  Its  significance  cannot 
be  overstated.  It  took  place  North  and 
South.  It  meant  opposition  to  a  movement 
that  was  outside  the  church  and  with  which 
religion  could  have  no  concern,  except  in  so 

68 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

far  as  it  was  a  vital  assault  upon  the  State,  and 
the  peace  of  the  State.  To  make  their  oppo 
sition  effective  the  Christians  of  that  day 
did  this  remarkable  thing.  They  reversed 
their  religious  views  on  slavery,  which  the 
Abolitionists  were  now  assailing,  and  which 
they  themselves  had  previously  opposed.  They 
re-examined  their  Bibles  and  found  argu 
ments  that  favored  slavery.  These  argu 
ments  they  used  in  an  attempt  to  stem  an 
agitation  that,  as  they  saw  it,  was  arraying 
section  against  section  and  threatening  the 
perpetuity  of  the  Union. 

United  testimony  from  all  these  Christian 
bodies  is  more  conclusive  contemporaneous 
evidence  against  the  agitators  and  their 
methods  than  even  the  proceedings  of  all 
conservative  Boston  at  Faneuil  Hall  in 
August,  1835. 

This  new  attitude  of  the  church  toward 
slavery  meant  perhaps  also  something  fur 
ther — it  meant  that  slavery,  as  it  actually 
existed,  was  not  then  as  horrible  to  North 
erners,  who  could  go  across  the  line  and  see 
it,  which  many  of  them  did,  as  it  is  now  to 
those  whose  ideas  of  it  come  chiefly  from 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin." 
69 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

In  view  of  this  phenomenal  movement  of 
Northern  Christians  it  is  not  strange  that 
Southern  churches  adhered,  throughout  the 
deadly  struggle  that  was  now  on,  to  the  po 
sition  into  which  they  had  been  driven — that 
slavery  was  sanctioned  by  the  Bible — nor 
is  it  matter  of  wonder  that,  as  Professor 
Hart  makes  prominent  on  p.  137,  "not 
a  single  Southern  man  of  large  reputation 
and  influence  failed  to  stand  by  slavery." 

Historians  of  to-day  usually  narrate  with 
out  comment  that  nearly  all  the  American 
churches  and  divines  at  first  opposed  the 
Abolitionists.  It  illustrates  the  courage 
with  which  the  Abolitionists  stood,  as  Dr. 
Hart  delights  to  point  out,  "for  a  despised 
cause."  They  assuredly  did  stand  by  their 
guns. 

Later,  another  change  came  about  in  the 
attitude  of  the  churches.  In  1844  the  Abo 
litionists  were  to  achieve  their  first  victory 
in  the  great  religious  world.  The  Methodist 
Church  was  then  disrupted,  "squarely  on 
the  question  whether  a  bishop  could  own 
slaves,  and  all  the  Southern  members  with 
drew  and  organized  the  Methodist  Episco 
pal  Church,  South."  Professor  Hart,  p.  214, 
70 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

says  of  this:  "Clearly,  the  impassioned 
agitation  of  the  Abolitionists  had  made  it 
impossible  for  a  great  number  of  Northern 
anti-slavery  men  to  remain  on  terms  oj 
friendship  with  their  Southern  brethren." 

That  great  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  of  Au 
gust  31,  1835,  was  followed  some  weeks  later 
by  a  lamentable  anti-Garrison  mob,  which 
did  not  stand  alone.  In  the  years  1835, 
1836,  and  1837  a  great  wave  of  anti-Aboli 
tion  excitement  swept  over  the  North.  In 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  Cincinnati,  Alton 
(Illinois),  and  many  other  places,  there  were 
anti-Abolition  riots,  sometimes  resulting  in 
arson  and  bloodshed. 

The  heart  of  the  great,  peace-loving, 
patriotic,  and  theretofore  happy  and  con 
tented  North,  was  at  that  time  stirred 
with  the  profoundest  indignation  against  the 
Abolitionists.  Northern  opinion  then  was 
that  the  Abolitionists,  by  their  unpatriotic 
course  and  their  nefarious  methods,  were 
driving  the  South  to  desperation  and  en 
dangering  the  Union.  If  the  North  at  that 
time  saw  the  situation  as  it  really  was,  the 
historian  of  the  present  day  should  say  so. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  people  of  both 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

/  the  North  and  South  were  then  laboring 
under  delusions,  as  to  the  facts  that  were 
occurring  among  them,  those  of  this  gener 
ation,  who  are  wiser  than  their  ancestors, 
should  give  us  the  sources  of  their  informa 
tion.  To  know  the  lessons  of  history  we 
must  have  the  facts.1 

In  1854,  at  Framingham,  Massachusetts, 
the  Abolitionists  celebrated  the  Fourth  of 
July  thus:  Their  leader,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  held  up  and  burned  to  ashes,  be 
fore  the  applauding  multitude,  one  after 
another,  copies  of 

ist.  The  fugitive  slave  law. 

2d.  The  decision  of  Commissioner  Loring 
in  the  case  of  Burns,  a  fugitive  slave. 

1  The  late  Professor  William  Graham  Sumner,  of  Yale,  in  his 
"Life  of  Andrew  Jackson,"  1888,  treats  of  the  excitement  at 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  in  1835,  during  Jackson's  adminis 
tration,  over  Abolition  circulars,  etc.  Dr.  Albert.  Bushnell  Hart, 
Professor  of  History  at  Harvard,  in  his  "Abolition  and  Slavery," 
1906,  treats  of  the  same  subject.  The  following  extracts  from 
these  books  will  show  how  these  authors  picture  that  exciting  pe 
riod,  and  our  italics  will  emphasize  the  sang-froid  with  which  they 
touch  off  what  so  profoundly  affected  public  sentiment,  both  North 
and  South,  when  the  events  were  occurring.  Professor  Sumner  has 
this  to  say: 

"The  Abolition  Society  adopted  the  policy  of  sending  docu 
ments,  papers,  and  pictures  against  slavery  to  the  Southern 
States. 

"  //  the  intention  was,  as  charged,  to  excite  the  slaves  to  revolt, 
the  device,  as  it  seems  to  us  now,  must  have  fallen  short  of  its  ob- 

72 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

3d.  The  charge  to  the  Grand  Jury  of 
Judge  Benjamin  R.  Curtis  in  reference  to 
the  effort  of  a  mob  to  secure  a  fugitive  slave. 

4th.  "Then,  holding  up  the  United  States 
Constitution,  he  branded  it  as  the  source 
and  parent  of  all  other  atrocities,  'a  cove 
nant  with  death  and  an  agreement  with 
hell,'  and  consumed  it  to  ashes  on  the  spot, 
exclaiming,  *  So  perish  all  compromises  with 
tyranny !  And  let  all  the  people  say,  Amen ! ' 
A  tremendous  shout  of  'Amen!'  went  up  to 
heaven  in  ratification  of  the  deed,  mingled 
with  a  few  hisses  and  wrathful  exclamations 

ject,  for  the  chance  that  anything  could  get  into  the  hands  of 
the  black  man  must  have  been  poor  indeed. 

"These  publications,  however,  caused  a  panic  and  a  wild  indig 
nation  in  the  South." — Sumner's  "Jackson,"  p.  350. 

Why  should  the  Southerners  of  that  day  go  wild  over  conduct 
for  which  the  professor  of  this  era  has  no  word  of  condemnation  ? 

Dr.  Hart  follows  Professor  Sumner's  treatment.  These  are  his 
words : 

"The  free  negroes  of  the  South,  the  Abolitionists  could  not 
reach  except  by  mailing  publications  to  them,  a  process  which 
fearfully  exasperated  the  South  without  reaching  the  persons  ad 
dressed."" — Hart's  "Abolition  and  Slavery,"  p.  216. 

Why  should  Southerners  be  "fearful"  when  they  were  inter 
cepting  all  the  dangerous  circulars,  etc.,  they  could  find?  And 
why  should  they  be  exasperated  at  all? 

Dr.  Hart's  chair  at  Harvard  is  within  gunshot  of  Faneuil  Hall, 
yet  the  great  meeting  there  of  August  31,  1835,  is  not  mentioned 
in  either  his  or  Professor  Sumner's  book,  nor  is  there  to  be  found 
in  either  of  them  any  explanation  of  the  reasons  underlying  the  gen 
eral  and  emphatic  condemnation  throughout  the  North  at  that  period 
of  the  Abolitionists  and  their  methods. 

73 


v/. 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

from  some,  who  evidently  were  in  a  rowdy- 
ish  state  of  mind,  but  who  were  at  once 
cowed  by  the  popular  feeling."  l 

The  Abolitionist  movement  was  radical; 
it  was  revolutionary.  When  an  accredited 
teacher  of  history,  in  one  of  the  greatest  of 
our  universities,  writes  a  volume  on  "Abo 
lition  and  Slavery,"  why  should  he  restrict 
himself  in  comment,  as  Dr.  Hart  thus  does 
in  his  preface?  The  book  is  "intended  to 
show  that  there  was  more  than  one  side  to 
the  controversy,  and  that  both  the  milder 
form  of  opposition  called  anti-slavery  and 
the  extreme  form  called  Abolition,  were  con 
fronted  by  practical  difficulties  which  to  many 
public  men  seemed  insurmountable." 

Why  should  not  the  historian,  in  addition 
to  pointing  out  the  "difficulties"  encoun 
tered  by  these  extremists,  show  how  and 
why  the  people  of  that  day  condemned  their 
conduct  ? 

Condonation  of  the  Abolitionists,  and  a 
roper  regard  for  the  Constitution  of  the 

nited  States,  cannot  be  taught  to  the 
outh  of  America  at  one  and  the  same 
ime. 

Garrison's  "Garrison,"  vol.  Ill,  p.  412. 

u  74 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

The  writer  has  been  unable  to  find  any  of 
the  incendiary  pamphlets  that  had  proved 
so  inflammatory.  He  has,  however,  before 
him  a  little  anonymous  publication  entitled 
"Slavery  Illustrated  in  its  Effects  upon 
Woman/'  Isaac  Knapp,  Boston,  1837.  It 
was  for  circulation  in  the  North,  being 
"Affectionately  Inscribed  to  all  the  Mem 
bers  of  Female  Anti-Slavery  Societies,"  and 
it  is  only  cited  here  as  an  illustration  of  the 
almost  inconceivable  venom  with  which  the 
crusade  was  carried  on  to  embitter  the  North 
against  the  South.  It  is  a  vicious  attacki 
upon  the  morality  of  Southern  men  and 
women,  and  upon  Southern  churches.  None 
of  its  charges  does  it  claim  to  authenticate, 
and  it  gives  no  names  or  dates.  One  inci 
dent,  related  as  typical,  is  of  two  white 
women,  all  the  time  in  full  communion  with 
their  church,  under  pretence  of  a  boarding- 
house,  keeping  a  brothel,  negro  women  be 
ing  the  inmates. 

In  the  chapter  entitled  "  Impurity  of  the 
Christian  Churches"  is  this  sentence:  "At 
present  the  Southern  Churches  are  only 
one  vast  consociation  of  hypocrites  and 


sinners." 


75 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

The  booklet  was  published  anonymously, 
but  at  that  time  any  prurient  story  about 
slavery  in  the  South  would  circulate,  no 
matter  whether  vouched  for  or  not. 


76 


CHAPTER  IV 
FEELING  IN  THE  SOUTH— 1835 

NOT  stronger  than  the  proceedings  of  a 
great  non-partisan  public  meeting,  or 
than  the  action  of  religious  bodies,  but  go 
ing  more  into  detail  as  to  public  opinion  in 
the  South  and  the  effect  upon  it  of  Abolition 
agitation,  is  the  evidence  of  a  quiet  observer, 
Professor  E.  A.  Andrews,  who,  in  July,  1835, 
had  been  sent  out  as  the  agent  of  "The  Bos 
ton  Union  for  the  Relief  and  Improvement 
of  the  Colored  Race."  His  reports  from  both 
Northern  and  Southern  States,  consisting 
of  letters  from  various  points,  constitute  a 
book,  "Slavery  and  the  Domestic  Slave 
Trade,"  Boston,  1836. 

July  17,  1835,  from  Baltimore,  Professor 
Andrews  reports  that  a  resident  clergyman, 
who  appears  to  have  his  entire  confidence, 
says,  among  other  things,  "that  a  disposi 
tion  to  emancipate  their  slaves  is  very  preva 
lent  among  the  slave-holders  of  this  State, 
could  they  see  any  way  to  do  so  consistently 

77 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

with  the  true  interest  of  the  slave,  but  that 
it  is  their  universal  belief  that  no  means  of 
doing  this  is  now  presented  except  that  of 
colonizing  them  in  Africa." 

From  the  same  city,  July  17,  1835,  he 
writes,  p.  53:  "In  this  city  there  appears 
to  be  no  strong  attachment  to  slavery  and 
no  wish  to  perpetuate  it." 

Again,  on  p.  95:  "There  is  but  one  sen 
timent  amongst  those  with  whom  I  have 
conversed  in  this  city,  respecting  the  possi 
bility  of  the  white  and  colored  races  living 
peaceably  together  in  freedom,  nor  during 
my  residence  at  the  South  and  my  subse 
quent  intercourse  with  the  Southern  people, 
did  I  ever  meet  with  one  who  believed  it  possible 
for  the  two  races  to  continue  together  after 
emancipation.  .  .  .  When  the  slaves  of  the 
South  are  liberated  they  form  an  integral 
part  of  the  population  of  the  country,  and 
must  influence  its  destiny  for  ages — perhaps 
forever." 

From  Fredericksburg,  Virginia,  Professor 
Andrews  writes : 

^  Since  I  entered  the  slave-holding  country  I  have 

seen  but  one  man  who  did  not  deprecate  wholly 
and  absolutely  the  direct  interference  of  Northern 

78 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Abolitionists  with  the  institutions  of  the  South.  "I 
was  an  Abolitionist,"  has  been  the  language  of  num 
bers  of  those  with  whom  I  have  conversed;  "I  was 
an  Abolitionist,  and  was  laboring  earnestly  to  bring 
about  a  prospective  system  of  emancipation.  I  even 
saw,  as  I  believed,  the  certain  and  complete  success  of 
the  friends  of  the  colored  race  at  no  distant  period,  when 
these  Northern  Abolitionists  interfered,  and  by  their 
extravagant  and  impracticable  schemes  frustrated  all 
our  hopes.  .  .  .  Our  people  have  become  exasperated, 
the  friends  of  the  slaves  alarmed,  etc.1  .  .  .  Equally 
united  are  they  in  the  opinion  that  the  servitude  of 
the  slaves  is  far  more  rigorous  now  than  it  would  have 
been  had  there  been  no  interference  with  them.  In 
proportion  to  the  danger  of  revolt  and  insurrection,  have 
been  the  severity  of  the  enactments  for  controlling 
them  and  the  diligence  with  which  the  laws  have  been 
executed." 

From  a  private  letter,  written  at  Green 
ville,  Alabama,  August  30,  1835,  by  a  dis 
tinguished  lawyer,  John  W.  Womack,  to 
his  brother,  we  quote: 

The  anti-slavery  societies  in  the  Northern  and 
Middle  States  are  doing  all  they  can  to  destroy  our 
domestic  harmony  by  sending  among  us  pamphlets, 
tracts,  and  newspapers — for  the  purpose  of  exciting 
dissatisfaction  and  insurrection  among  our  slaves. 
.  .  .  Meetings  have  been  held  in  Mobile,  in  Mont- 

"  Slavery  and  the  Domestic  Slave  Trade,"  Andrews,  pp. 
IS6-S7. 

79 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

gomery,  in  Greensboro,  and  in  Tuscaloosa,  and  in 
different  parts  of  all  the  Southern  States.  At  these 
meetings  resolutions  have  been  adopted,  disclaim 
ing  (sic)  and  denying  the  right  of  the  Northern  people 
to  interfere  in  any  manner  in  our  internal  domestic 
concerns.  ...  It  is  my  solemn  opinion  that  this 
question  (to  wit,  slavery)  will  ultimately  bring  about 
a  dissolution  of  the  Union  of  the  States. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  in  1832  the 
massacre  in  Santo  Domingo  of  all  the  whites 
by  the  blacks  was  fresh  in  mind.  It  had 
f  occurred  in  1814 — after  manumission — and 
had  produced,  especially  in  the  minds  of 
statesmen  and  of  all  observers  of  the  many 
signs  of  antagonism  between  the  two  races, 
a  profound  and  lasting  impression. 

The  fear  that  the  races,  both  free,  could 
,  not  live  together  was  in  the  mind  of  Thomas 
Jefferson,  of  Henry  Clay,  and  of  every  other 
Southern  emancipationist.  And  deporta 
tion,  its  expense,  and  the  want  of  a  home  to 
which  to  send  the  negro — here  was  a  stum 
bling-block  in  the  way  of  Southern  emanci 
pation. 

Indeed,  the  incompatibility  of  the  races 
was  an  appalling  thought  in  the  minds  of 
Southerners  for  the  whole  thirty  years  of 
anti-slavery  agitation.  It  was  even  with 

80 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Abraham  Lincoln,  and  weighed  upon  his 
mind  when,  at  last,  in  1862,  military  neces 
sity  placed  upon  his  shoulders  the  responsi 
bility  of  emancipating  the  Southern  slaves. 
Serious  as  was  the  responsibility,  the  ques 
tion  was  not  new  to  him.  When  Mr.  Lin 
coln  said,  in  his  celebrated  Springfield  speech 
in  1858,  "I  believe  this  government  cannot 
endure  permanently  half  slave  and  half 
free,"  and  added  that  he  did  not  expect  the 
government  to  fail,  he  certainly  expected 
that  emancipation  in  the  South  was  com 
ing;  and,  of  course,  he  thought  over  what 
the  consequences  might  be. 

In  that  same  debate  with  Douglas,  in  his 
speech  at  Charleston,  Illinois,  Mr.  Lincoln 
said:  "There  is  a  physical  difference  be 
tween  the  white  and  black  races,  which,  I 
believe,  will  forever  forbid  the  two  races 
living  together  on  terms  of  social  and  po 
litical  equality." 

In  his  memorial  address  on  Henry  Clay, 
in  1852,  he  had  said:  "If,  as  the  friends  of 
colonization  hope,  the  present  and  coming 
generations  of  our  countrymen  shall  by 
some  means  succeed  in  freeing  our  land  from 
the  dangerous  presence  of  slavery,  and  at 

81 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  same  time  in  restoring  a  captive  people 
to  their  long  lost  father-land,  ...  it  will, 
indeed,  be  a  glorious  consummation.  And 
if  to  such  a  contribution  the  efforts  of  Mr. 
Clay  shall  have  contributed  .  .  .  none  of 
his  labors  will  have  been  more  valuable  to 
his  country  and  his  kind/' 

In  his  famous  emancipation  proclamation 
he  promised  "that  the  effort  to  colonize  per 
sons  of  African  descent  upon  this  continent 
or  elsewhere,  with  the  consent  of  the  govern 
ment  existing  there,  will  be  continued." 

It  must  have  been  with  a  heavy  heart  that 
the  great  President  announced  the  failure 
of  all  his  efforts  to  find  a  home  outside  of 
America  for  the  freedmen,  when  he  informed 
Congress  in  his  December  message,  1862,  that 
all  in  vain  he  had  asked  permission  to  send  the 
negroes,  when  freed,  to  the  British,  the  Danish, 
and  the  French  West  Indies;  and  that  the 
Spanish-American  countries  in  Central  Amer 
ica  had  also  refused  his  request.  He  could 
find  no  places  except  Hayti  and  Liberia. 
He  even  made  the  futile  experiment  of  send 
ing  a  ship-load  to  a  little  island  off  Hayti.1 

1  Within  perhaps  a  year  Mr.  Lincoln  was  compelled  to  bring 
these  negroes  home;  they  were  starving. 

82 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Hume,  in  "The  Abolitionists/'  tells  us  that 
Mr.  Lincoln  for  a  time  considered  setting 
Texas  apart  as  a  home  for  the  negroes — so 
much  was  he  disturbed  by  this  trouble. 


CHAPTER  V 
ANTI-ABOLITION  AT  THE  NORTH 

OOUTHERNERS,  save  perhaps  a  few 
O  who  were  wise  enough  to  foresee  what 
the  consequences  might  be,  were  deeply 
gratified  when  they  read  (1835-1838)  of 
the  violent  opposition  in  the  North  to  the 
desperate  schemes  of  the  Abolitionists. 
Surely  these  mobs  fairly  represented  public 
opinion,  and  that  public  opinion  certainly 
was  a  strong  guaranty  to  the  South  of  fu 
ture  peace  and  security. 

But  the  Abolitionists  themselves  were  not 
dismayed.  They  may  have  misread,  indeed 
it  is  certain  they  did  misunderstand,  the 
signs  of  the  times.  Garrison  in  his  Liber 
ator  took  the  ground — as  do  his  children  in 
their  life  of  him,  written  fifty  years  later— 
that  the  great  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  of 
August  31,  1835,  which  they  themselves 
declare  represented  "the  intelligence,  the 
wealth,  the  culture,  and  the  religion  of 
Boston,"  was  but  an  indication  of  the  "pro- 
84 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

slavery"  sentiment  then  existing.  In  reality 
it  was  just  what  it  purported  to  be — an 
authoritative  condemnation,  not  of  the 
anti-slavery  opinions,  but  of  the  avowed 
purposes  and  methods  of  the  new  sect. 
The  mobbing  of  Garrison  and  the  sacking 
of  his  printing  office  in  Boston  on  Septem 
ber  26th,  however,  and  the  lawless  violence 
to  Abolitionists  that  followed  the  denuncia 
tions  of  that  despised  sect  by  speakers,  and 
by  the  public  press,  in  New  York,  in  Phila 
delphia,  in  Cincinnati,  and  elsewhere  in  the 
North,  proved  disastrous  in  the  extreme. 

While  that  great  wave  of  anti-Abolition 
feeling  was  sweeping  over  that  whole  region 
from  East  to  West,  there  were  many  good 
people  who  deluded  themselves  with  the 
idea  that  this  new  sect  with  its  visionary 
and  impracticable  ideas  was  being  consigned 
to  oblivion,  but  in  what  followed  we  have  a 
lesson  that  unfortunately  some  of  our  peo 
ple  have  not  yet  fully  learned.  Mob  law  in 
any  portion  of  our  free  country,  where  there 
is  law  with  officers  to  enforce  it,  is  a  mis 
take,  a  mistake  that  is  likely  to  be  followed 
sooner  or  later  by  most  disastrous  results. 
The  mobs  that  marked  the  beginning  of 

85 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

our  Revolution  in  1774  were  legitimate; 
they  meant  revolt,  revolt  against  constituted 
authorities.  But  where  a  mob  does  not 
mean  the  overthrow  of  government,  where 
it  only  means  to  substitute  its  own  blind 
will  for  the  arm  of  the  law,  not  good  but 
evil — it  may  be  long  deferred,  but  evil  event 
ually — is  sure  to  follow.  When  mobs  as 
sailed  Abolitionists  because  they  threatened 
the  peace  and  tranquillity  of  the  country, 
evil  followed  swiftly. 

Violent  and  harsh  treatment  of  these  mis 
chievous  agitators  almost  everywhere  in  the 
North,  and  the  heroism  with  which  they 
endured  ignominy  and  insult,  brought  about 
a  revulsion  of  public  sentiment.  To  under 
stand  the  philosophy  of  this,  read  two  ex 
tracts  from  the  writings  of  that  great,  and 
universally  admired,  pulpit  orator,  Dr. 
William  E.  Channing  of  Boston,  the  first 
written  sometime  prior  to  that  August 
meeting: 

The  adoption  of  the  common  system  of  agitation 
by  the  Abolitionists  has  not  been  justified  by  suc 
cess.  From  the  beginning  it  has  created  alarm  in 
the  considerate,  and  strengthened  the  sympathies  of 
the  Free  States  with  the  slave-holder.  It  has  made 

86 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

converts  of  a  few  individuals,  but  alienated  multi 
tudes.  Its  influence  at  the  South  has  been  almost 
wholly  evil.  It  has  stirred  up  bitter  passions,  and  a 
fierce  fanaticism,  which  have  shut  every  ear  and  every 
heart  against  its  arguments  and  persuasions.  These 
efforts  are  more  to  be  deplored,  because  the  hope  of 
freedom  to  the  slave  lies  chiefly  in  the  dispositions 
of  his  master.  The  Abolitionist  proposed  indeed 
to  convert  the  slave-holder;  and  for  this  end  he 
approached  them  with  vituperation,  and  exhausted  upon 
them  the  vocabulary  of  reproach.  And  he  has  reaped 
as  he  sowed.  .  .  .  Perhaps  (though  I  am  anxious  to 
repel  the  thought)  something  has  been  lost  to  the 
cause  of  freedom  and  humanity.1 

These  were  Dr.  Channing's  opinions  of 
the  Abolitionists  prior  to  August,  1835,  and 
he  seems  to  have  kept  silent  for  a  time  after 
the  mobbing  that  followed  that  great  Fan- 
euil  Hall  meeting;  but  a  year  later,  when 
many  other  things  had  happened  along  the 
same  line,  he  spoke  out  in  an  open  letter  to 
James  G.  Birney,  an  Abolitionist  editor  who 
had  been  driven  from  Cincinnati,  and  whose 
press,  on  which  The  Philanthropist  was 
printed,  had  been  broken  up.  In  that  let 
ter,  p.  157,  supra,  speaking  of  course  not 
for  himself  alone,  Dr.  Channing  says: 

1  "  Channing's  Works,"  vol.  II,  ed.  1837,  pp.  131-32. 

87 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

I  think  it  best  ...  to  extend  my  remarks  to  the 
spirit  of  violence  and  persecution  which  has  broken 
out  against  the  Abolitionists  throughout  the  whole 
country.  Of  their  merits  and  demerits  as  Abolition 
ists  I  have  formerly  spoken.  ...  I  have  expressed 
my  fervent  attachment  to  the  great  end  to  which 
they  are  pledged  and  at  the  same  time  my  disappro 
bation)  to  a  certain  extent,  of  their  spirit  and  measures. 
.  .  .  Deliberate,  systematic  efforts  have  been  made, 
not  here  and  there -,  but  far  and  wide,  to  wrest  from  its 
adherents  that  liberty  of  speech  and  the  press,  which 
our  fathers  asserted  in  blood,  and  which  our  Na 
tional  and  State  Governments  are  pledged  to  protect 
as  our  most  sacred  right.  Its  most  conspicuous  ad 
vocates  have  been  hunted  and  stoned,  its  meetings 
scattered,  its  presses  broken  up,  and  nothing  but 
the  patience,  constancy  and  intrepidity  of  its  mem 
bers  has  saved  it  from  extinction.  .  .  .  They  are 
sufferers  for  the  liberty  of  thought,  speech  and  press; 
and  in  maintaining  this  liberty,  amidst  insult  and 
violence,  they  deserve  a  place  among  its  honorable 
defenders. 

Still  admitting  that  "their  writings  have 
been  blemished  by  a  spirit  of  intolerance, 
sweeping  censure,  and  rash,  injurious  judg 
ment/'  this  great  man  now  threw  all  the 
weight  of  his  influence  on  the  side  of  the 
Abolitionists,  because  they  were  the  cham 
pions  of  free  speech.  Their  moral  worth 

88 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

and  steady  adherence  to  their  ideas  of  non- 
resistance  he  pointed  to  admiringly,  and  it 
must  always  be  remembered  to  their  credit 
that  the  private  lives  of  Garrison  and  his 
leading  co-workers  were  irreproachable.  In 
deed,  the  unselfish  devotion  of  these  agi 
tators  and  their  high  moral  character  were 
in  themselves  a  serious  misfortune.  They 
soon  attracted  a  lot  of  zealots,  male  and 
female,  who  became  as  reckless  as  they  were. 
And  these  out-and-out  fanatics  were  not 
themselves  office-seekers.  What  they  feared, 
they  said,  was  that  a  "lot  of  soulless  scamps 
would  jump  on  to  their  shoulders  to  ride 
into  office"; l  and  there  really  was  the  great 
danger,  as  appeared  later. 

In  the  results  that  followed  the  mobbing 
of  Abolitionists  in  the  North,  from  1834  to 
1836,  is  to  be  found  another  lesson  for  those 
voters  of  this  day  who  can  profit  by  the 
teachings  of  history.  The  violent  assaults 
on  the  Abolitionists  by  the  friends  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  Union  constituted  an 
epoch  in  the  lives  of  these  people.  It  gave 
them  a  footing  and  a  hearing  and  many 
converts. 

Garrison's  "Garrison,"  vol.  Ill,  p.  214. 
89 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

We  have  already  noted  some  wonderful 
and  instructive  changes  in  the  tide  of  events 
set  in  motion  by  the  radical  teachings  of  the 
New  Abolitionists.  The  churches,  as  has 
been  shown,  to  save  the  country,  North  and 
South,  changed  their  attitude  on  slavery 
itself.  Dr.  Channing,  who  had  opposed  the 
methods  of  the  Abolitionists,  became,  as 
many  others  did  with  him,  when  mobs  had 
assailed  these  people,  their  defender  and 
eulogist,  becausgjthey^were  martyrs  for  the 
sa^fi^fjree^sgeech  f?  and  now  we  are  to 
see  in  John  Quincy  Adams  another  change, 
equally  notable,  a  change  that  was  to  make 
Mr.  Adams  thenceforward  the  most  mo 
mentous  figure,  at  least  during  its  earlier 
stages,  in  the  tragic  drama  that  is  the  sub 
ject  of  our  story. 

Elected  to  the  House  of  Representatives 
after  the  expiration  of  his  term  as  President, 
Mr.  Adams  was  not  in  sympathy  with  the 
methods  of  the  Abolitionists.  Indeed,  prior 
to  December  31,  1831,  he  had  shown  as  lit 
tle  interest  in  slavery  as  he  did  when  on  that 
day  in  presenting  to  the  House  fifteen  peti 
tions  against  slavery  he  "deprecated  a  dis 
cussion  which  would  lead  to  ill-will,  to  heart- 

90 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

I  burning,  to  mutual  hatred  .  .  .  without 
(accomplishing  anything  else/' 

The  petitions  presented  by  Mr.  Adams 
were  referred  to  a  committee. 

The  Southerners  had  not  then  become 
so  exasperated  as  to  insist  on  Congress  re 
fusing  to  receive  Abolition  petitions.  But 
multiplying  these  petitions  was  a  ready 
means  of  provoking  the  slave-holders,  and 
soon  petitions  poured  in  from  many  quar 
ters,  couched,  most  of  them,  ^language, 
not  disrespectful  to  Congress  but  provoking 
to  slave-holders. 

Unfortunately,  the  lower  house  of  Con 
gress  on  May  26,  1836,  which  was  while 
mobs  in  the  North  were  still  trying  to  put 
down  the  Abolitionists,  passed  a  resolution 
that  all  such  petitions,  etc.,  should  there 
after  be  laid  upon  the  table,  without  further 
action.  Adams  voted  against  it  as  "a  direct 
violation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States."  The  Constitution  forbids  any  law 
"abridging  the  freedom  of  speech  ...  or 
the  right  ...  to  petition  the  government 
for  a  redress  of  grievances."  The  resolu 
tion  to  lay  all  anti-slavery  petitions  on  the 

Cart's  "Slavery  and  Abolition,"  p.  256. 
91 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

table  without  further  action  was  passed, 
"with  the  hope  that  it  might  put  a  stop  to 
the  agitation  that  seemed  to  endanger  the 
existence  of  the  Union."  But  it  had  the 
opposite  effect.  It  soon  became  known  as 
the  "gag  resolution,"  and  was,  for  years,  the 
centre  of  the  most  aggravating  discussions 
that  had,  up  to  that  time,  ever  occurred  in 
Congress.  Mr.  Adams  in  these  debates  be 
came,  without,  it  seems,  ever  having  been 
in  full  sympathy  with  the  agitators,  thence 
forward  their  champion  in  Congress,  and  so 
continued  until  the  day  of  his  death  in  1848. 
The  Abolitionists  were  happy.  They  were 
succeeding  in  their  programme — making  the 
Southern  slave-holder  odious  by  exasper 
ating  him  into  offending  Northern  senti 
ment. 


92 


CHAPTER  VI 

A  CRISIS  AND  A  COMPROMISE 

IN  1840  there  were  200  Abolition  societies, 
with  a  membership  of  over  200,000. 
Agitation  had  created  all  over  the  North  a 
spirit  of  hostility  to  slavery  as  it  existed  in 
the  South,  and  especially  to  the  admission 
of  new  slave  States  into  the  Union.  In  1840 
the  struggle  over  the  application  of  Texas 
for  admission  into  the  Union  had  already, 
for  three  years,  been  mooted.  Objections  to 
the  admission  of  the  new  State  were  many, 
such  as:  American  adventurers  had  wrong 
fully  wrested  control  of  the  new  State  from 
Mexico;  boundary  lines  were  unsettled; 
war  with  Mexico  would  follow,  etc.;  but 
chiefly,  Texas  was  a  slave  State,  which  was, 
in  the  South,  a  strong  reason  for  annexa 
tion.  There  were,  however,  many  sound 
and  unanswerable  arguments  for  the  admis 
sion  of  the  new  State,  just  such  as  had  in 
fluenced  Jefferson  in  purchasing  the  Loui- 

93 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

siana  territory:  Texas  was  contiguous,  her 
territory  and  resources  immense. 

On  the  issue  thus  joined  the  first  great 
gun  had  been  fired  by  Dr.  Channing,  who, 
though  still  more  moderate  than  some,  might 
now  be  classed  as  an  Abolitionist.  August 
i,  1837,  he  wrote  a  long  open  letter  to  Henry 
Clay  against  annexation,  and  in  that  letter 
he  said: 

To  me  it  seems  not  only  the  right  but  the  duty  of 
the  Free  States,  in  case  of  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
to  say  to  the  slave-holding  States,  "We  regard  this 
act  as  the  dissolution  of  the  Union;  the  essential 
conditions  of  the  National  Compact  are  violated."  * 

This  was  very  like  the  pronunciamento 
already  made  by  Garrison—  "no  union  with 
slavery." 

The  underlying  reasons  that  controlled 
Southern  statesmen  in  this  contest  over 
Texas,  and  the  motives  that  animated  them 
in  the  fierce  battles  they  fought  later  for 
new  slave  States,  are  thus  stated  by  Mr. 
George  Ticknor  Curtis,  of  New  England.2 

It  should  in  justice  be  remembered  that  the  effort 

at  that  period  to  enlarge  the  area  of  slavery  was  an  effort 

1  "Channing's  Works,"  vol.  II,  ed.  1847,  p.  237. 

2  "Life  of  Buchanan,"  vol.  II,  p.  280. 

94 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

on  the  part  of  the  South,  dictated  by  a  desire  to  remain 
in  the  Union,  and  not  to  accept  the  issue  of  an  inher 
ent  incompatibility  of  a  political  union  between  slave- 
holding  and  non-slave-holding  States. 

In  1840  the  first  effort  for  the  annexation 
of  Texas,  by_  treaty,_was  _defeated  in  the 
Senate. 

If  the  Southerners  had  been  as  ready  to 
accept  the  doctrine  of  an  inherent  incom 
patibility  between  slave  and  free  States  as 
were  Dr.  Channing  and  those  other  Aboli 
tionists  who  were  now  declaring  for  "no 
union  with  slave-holders,"  they  would  at 
once  have  seceded  and  joined  Texas;  but 
the  South  still  loved  the  Union,  and  strove, 
down  to  1860,  persistently,  and  often  pas 
sionately,  forj)Qwer  that  would  enable  it  to 
remain  safely  in  its  folds. 

Texas  was  finally  admitted  in  1845,  after 
annexation  had  been  passed  on  by  the  peo 
ple  in  the  presidential  election  of  1844.  In 
that  election  Clay  was  defeated  by  the 
Abolitionists.  Because  Clay  was  not  unre 
servedly  against  annexation  the  Abolition 
ists  drew  from  the  Whigs  in  New  York 
State  enough  votes,  casting  them  for  Bir- 
ney,  to  defeat  Clay  and  elect  Polk;  and 
95 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

now  Abolitionism  was  a  factor  in  national 

i-  • 
politics. 

The  two  great  national  parties  were  the 
Democrats  and  the  Whigs,  the  voters  some 
what  equally  divided  between  them.  For 
years  both  parties  had  regarded  the  Aboli 
tionists  precisely  as  did  the  non-partisan 
meeting  at  Faneuil  Hall,  in  August,  1835— 
as  a  band  of  agitators,  organized  for  the 
purpose  of  interfering  with  slavery  where  it 
was  none  of  their  business ;  and  both  parties 
had  meted  out  to  this  new  and,  as  they 
deemed  it,  pestilent  sect,  unstinted  con 
demnation.  But  at  last  the  voters  of  this 
despised  cult  had  turned  a  presidential  elec 
tion  and  were  making  inroads  in  both  par 
ties.  Half  a  dozen  Northern  States,  in  which 
in  1835  "no  protest  had  been  made  against 
the  fugitive  slave  law  of  1793,"  had  already 
passed  "personal  liberty  laws"  intended  to 
obstruct  and  nullify  that  law.  And  now  it 
was  "slave-catchers"  and  not  Abolitionists 
who  were  being  mobbed  in  the  North. 

Boston  had  reversed  its  attitude  toward 
the  Abolitionists.  On  May  31,  1849,  the 
New  England  Anti-Slavery  Society  was 
holding  its  annual  convention  in  that  very 

96 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Faneuil  Hall  where,  in  1835,  Abolitionism 
had  been  so  roundly  condemned;  and  now 
Wendell  Phillips,  pointing  to  one  of  two 
fugitive  slaves,  who  then  sat  triumphantly 
on  the  platform,  said,  "amid  great  applause, 
.  .  .  'We  say  that  they  may  make  their 
little  laws  in  Washington,  but  that  Faneuil 
Hall  repeals  them,  in  the  name  of  the  hu 
manity  of  Massachusetts."' 1 
\s~  Poets  headed  by  Whittier  and  Long- 
^  fellow,  authors  like  Emerson  and  Lowell, 
and  orators  like  Theodore  Parker  and  Wen 
dell  Phillips,  had  joined  the  agitators,  and 
all  united  in  assaulting  the  fugitive  slave 
law.  The  following,  from  James  Russell 
Lowell's  "Biglow  Papers,"  No.  i,  June, 
1840,  is  a  specimen  of  the  literature  that 
was  stirring  up  hostility  against  slavery  and 
the  "slave-catcher"  in  the  breasts  of  many 
thousands,  who  were  joining  in  an  anti- 
slavery  crusade  while  disdaining  compan 
ionship  with  the  Abolitionists: 

"Ain't  it  cute  to  see  a  Yankee 
Take  such  everlastin'  pains  * 

All  to  get  the  Devil's  Thankee 
Helpin'  on  'em  weld  their  chains?" 

Garrison's  "Garrison,"  vol.  Ill,  p.  247, 

97 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

W'y  it's  jest  es  clear  es  figgers, 
Clear  es  one  and  one  makes  two, 
Chaps  that  makes  black  slaves  of  niggers 
Want  to  make  w'ite  slaves  oj  you.  %  / 

In  the  meantime  the  people  of  thejkmth, 
much  excited,  were  resorting  to  repression, 
passing  laws  to  prevent  slaves  from  being 
taught  to  read,  and  laws,  in  some  States, 
inhibiting  assemblages  of  slaves  above  given 
numbers,  unless  some  white  person  were 
present — all  as  safeguards  against  insur 
rection.  Thus,  in  1835,  an  indictment  was 
found  in  Tuscaloosa  County,  Alabama, 
against  one  Williams,  who  had  never  been 
in  Alabama,  for  circulating  there  an  alleged 
incendiary  document,  and  Governor  Gayle 
made  requisition  on  Governor  Marcy,  of 
New  York,  for  the  extradition  of  Williams. 
Governor  Marcy  denied  the  request.  The 
case  was  the  same  as  that  more  recently 
decided  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  when  it  held  that  editors  of  New 
York  and  Indiana  papers  could  not  be 
brought  to  the  District  of  Columbia  for 
trial. 

The  South,  all  the  while  clamoring  to  have 
the  agitators  put  down,  had  by  still  other 
98 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

means  than  these  contributed  to  the  ever- 
increasing  excitement  in  the  North.  South 
erners  had  mobbed  Abolitionists,  and 
whipped  and  driven  out  of  the  country 
persons  found  in  possession  of  The  Liberator 
or  suspected  of  circulating  other  incendi 
ary  literature.  And  violence  in  the  South 
against  the  Abolitionists  had  precisely  the 
same  effect  on  the  Northern  mind  as  the 
violence  against  them  in  the  North  had  from 
1835  to  1838,  but  there  was  this  difference: 
the  refugee  from  the  distant  South,  whether 
he  were  an  escaped  slave  or  a  fleeing  Abo 
litionist,  could  color  and  exaggerate  the 
wrongs  he  had  suffered  and  so  parade  him 
self  as  a  martyr.  While  this  was  true,  it 
was  also  quite  often  true  that  the  outrage 
committed  in  the  South  against  the  suspect 
was  real  enough — a  mob  had  whipped  and 
expelled  him  without  any  trial.  And  this  is 
another  of  the  lessons  as  to  the  evil  effects  of 
mob  law  that  crop  out  all  through  the  history 
of  the  anti-slavery  crusade.  No  good  can  come 
from  violating  the  law. 

In  1848  another  presidential  election 
turned  on  the  anti-slavery  vote,  this  time 
again  in  New  York  State.  Anti-slavery 

99 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

Democrats  bolted  the  Democratic  ticket, 
thus  electing  General  Taylor,  the  Whig 
candidate. 

In  the  canvass  preceding  this  election 
originated,  we  are  told,  the  catch-phrase 
applied  to  Cass,  the  Democratic  candidate 

"a  Northern  man  with  Southern  prin 
ciples."  The  phrase  soon  became  quite 
common,  South  and  North— "a  Southern 
man  with  Northern  principles,"  and  vice 
versa. 

The  invention  and  use  of  it  in  1848  shows 
the  progress  that  had  been  made  in  .array- 
ing^3ne_sectipn  of  thejjnioji  against  the 
Bother.  Later,  a  telling  piece  of  doggerel  in 
Southern  canvasses,  and  it  must  also  have 
been  used  North,  was 

He  wired  in  and  wired  out, 
Leaving  the  people  all  in  doubt, 
Whether  the  snake  that  made  the  track 
Was  going  North,  or  coming  back. 

Over  the  admission  of  California  in  1849 
there  was  another  battle.  California,  734 
miles  long,  with  about  50,000  people  (less 
than  the  usual  number),  and  with  a  consti 
tution  -improvised  under  military  govern- 
100 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

merit,   applied   for  admission   as   a   State. 
Southerners  insisted  on  extending  the  line 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise -to 'die  Pacific, 
thereby  making  of  the  new  ^emtory^wo^ 
States.    The  South  had  been  much  embit 
tered  by  the  opposition  to  the  admission  of 
Texas.    Texas  was,  nearly  all  of  it,  below  *?•** ; 
the    Missouri    Compromise    line,    and    the 
South  thought  it  was  equitably  entitled  to71     gS 
come  in  under  that  agreement.     Its  case, 
too,  differed  from  that  of  Missouri,  which 
already  belonged  to  the  United  States  when 
it  applied  for  admission  as  a  State.    Texas, 
with  all  its  vast  wealth,  was  asking  to  come 
in  without  price.   ~ 

Another  continuing  and  increasing  cause 
of  distraction  had  been  the  use  made  by 
Abolitionists  of  the  right  of  petition.  As 
already  shown,  petitions  to  Congress  against 
slavery  had  been  received  without  question 
till  1836,  when  Northern  conservatives  and 
Southern  members,  hoping  to  abate  this 
source  of  agitation,  had  combined  to  pass 
a  resolution  to  lay  them  on  the  table,  which 
meant  that  they  were  to  be  no  further  no 
ticed.  The  Abolitionists  were  so  delighted 
over  the  indefensible  position  into  which 

101 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

they  had  driven  the  conservatives — the 
"gag  law5'— that  they  continued,  up  to  the 
crisis*  of  1850,  with  unflagging  zeal  to  hurry 
Jn  monster  .petitions,  one  after  another. 
The  debates  provoked  by  the  presentation 
of  these  petitions,  and  the  more  and  more 
heated  discussions  in  Congress  of  slavery 
in  the  States,  which  was  properly  a  local  and 
not  a  national  question,  now  attracted  still 
wider  public  attention.  The  Abolitionists 
had  almost  succeeded  in  arraying  the  entire 
sections  against  each  other,  in  making  of 
the  South  and  North  two  hostile  nations. 
Professor  John  W.  Burgess,  dean  of  the 
Faculty  of  Political  Science  in  Columbia 
University,  says:  "It  would  not  be  extrava 
gant  to  say  that  the  whole  course  of  the 
internal  history  of  the  United  States  from 
1836  to  1 86 1  was  more  largely  determined 
by  the  struggle  in  Congress,  over  the  Aboli 
tion  petitions  and  the  use  of  the  mails  for 
the  Abolition  literature,  than  anything 
else."  1 

The  South  had  its  full  share  in  the  hot 
debates  that  took  place  over  these  matters 
in  Congress.  Its  congressmen  were  quite 

1  "The  Middle  Period,"  John  W.  Burgess,  p.  274. 
102 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

as  aggressive  as  those  from  the  North,  and 
they  were  accused  of  being  imperious  in 
manner,  when  demanding  that  a  stop  should 
be  put  to  Abolition  petitions,  and  Abolition 
literature  going  South  in  the  mails. 

There  was  another  cause  of  complaint 
from  the  South,  and  this  was  grave.  By 
the  "two  underground  railroads"  that  had 
been  established,  slaves,  estimated  at  2,000 
annually,  abducted  or  voluntarily  escaping, 
were  secretly  escorted  into  or  through  the 
free  States  to  Canada.  To  show  how  all 
this  was  then  regarded  by  those  who  sym 
pathized  with  the  Abolitionists,  and  how  it 
is  still  looked  upon  by  some  modern  his 
torians,  the  following  is  given  from  Hart's 
"Abolition  and  Slavery": 

'The  underground  railroad  was  manned 
chiefly  by  orderly  citizens,  members  of 
churches,  and  philanthropical  citizens.  To 
law-abiding  folk  what  could  be  more  delight 
ful  than  the  sensation  of  aiding  an  oppressed 
slave,  exasperating  a  cruel  master,  and  at  the 
same  time  incurring  the  penalties  of  defying 
an  unrighteous  law?" 

Southerners  at  that  time  thought  that 
conductors  on  that  line  were  practising,  and 
103 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

readers  of  the  above  paragraph  will  prob 
ably  think  that  Dr.  Hart  in  his  attractive 
rhetoric  is  now  extolling  in  his  history, 
"higher  law  doctrines." 

!lt  is  undoubtedly  true  that,  in  1850, 
a  large  majority  of  the  Northern  people 
strongly  disapproved  of  the  Abolitionists 
land  their  methods.  Modern  historians  care- 
'  fully  point  out  the  difference  between  the 
great  body  of  Northern  anti-slavery  people 
and  the  Abolitionists.  Nevertheless,  here 
were  majorities  in  eleven  Northern  States 
voting  for,  and  sustaining,  the  legislators 
who  passed  and  kept  upon  the  statute  books 
laws  which  were  intended  to  enable  South 
ern  slaves  to  escape  from  their  masters. 
The  enactment  and  the  support  of  these 
laws  was  an  attack  upon  the  constitutional 
rights  of  slave-holders ;  and  Southern  people 
looked  upon  all  the  voters  who  sustained 
these  laws,  and  all  the  anti-slavery  lecturers, 
speakers,  pulpit  orators,  and  writers  of  the 
North,  as  engaged  with  the  Abolitionists  in 
one  common  crusade  against  slavery.  From 
the  Southern  stand-point  a  difference  be 
tween  them  could  only  be  made  by  a 
Hudibras: 

104 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

He  was  in  logic  a  great  critic 

Profoundly  skilled  in  analytic, 

He  could  distinguish  and  divide 

A  hair  'twixt  South  and  South  West  side. 

As  to  how  much  of  the  formidable  anti- 
slavery  sentiment  of  that  day  had  been 
created  by  the  Abolitionists,  we  have  this 
opinion  of  a  distinguished  English  traveller 
and  observer.  Mr.  L.  W.  A.  Johnston  was 
in  Washington,  in  1850,  studying  America. 
He  says: 

"  Extreme  men  like  Garrison  seldom  have 
justice  done  to  them.  It  is  true  they  may 
be  impracticable,  both  as  to  their  measures 
and  their  men,  but  that  unmixed  evil  is  the 
result  of  their  exertions,  all  history  of  opin 
ion  in  every  country,  I  think,  contradicts. 
Such  ultra  men  are  as  necessary  as  the  more 
moderate  and  reasonable  advocates  of  any 
growing  opinion;  and,  as  an  impartial  per 
son,  who  never  happened  to  fall  in  with  one 
of  the  party  in  the  course  of  my  tour,  I  must 
express  my  belief  that  the  present  wide 
diffusion  of  anti-slavery  sentiment  in  the 
United  States  is,  in  no  small  degree,  owing 
to  their  exertions."  J 

1  "Notes  on  North  America,"  London,  1851,  vol.  II,  p.  486. 
105 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

And  Professor  Smith,  of  Williams  College, 
speaking  of  the  anti-slavery  feeling  in  the 
North  in  1850,  says: 

"This  sentiment  of  the  free  States  re 
garding  slavery  was  to  a  large  degree  the 
result  of  an  agitation  for  its  abolition  which 
had  been  active  for  a  score  of  years  (1831- 
1850)  without  any  positive  results." 

But  no  matter  what  had  produced  it,  the 
anti-slavery  sentiment  that  pervaded  the 
North  in  1850  boded  ill  to  slavery  and  to 
the  Constitution,  and  the  South  was  bitterly 
complaining.  Congress  met  in  December, 
1849,  and  was  to  sit  until  October,  1850. 
Lovers  of  the  Union,  North  and  South, 
watched  its  proceedings  with  the  deepest 
anxiety.  The  South  was  much  excited. 
The  continual  torrent  of  abuse  to  which  it 
was  subjected,  the  refusal  to  allow  slavery 
in  States  to  be  created  from  territory  in  the 
South-west  that  was  below  the  parallel  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  the  complete 
nullification  of  the  fugitive  slave  law,  seemed 
to  many  to  be  no  longer  tolerable,  and  from 
sundry  sources  in  that  section  came  threats 
of  secession. 

1  "Parties  and  Slavery,"  Smith,  pp.  3,  4. 

106 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

In  1849-50  the  South  was  demanding  a 
division  of  California,  an  efficient  fugitive 
slave  law,  and  that  the  territories  of  New 
Mexico  and  Arizona  should  be  organized 
with  no  restrictions  as  to  slavery.  Other 
minor  demands  were  unimportant. 

Henry  Clay,  Daniel  Webster,  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  Lewis  Cass,  and  other  conserva 
tive  leaders  came  forward  and,  after  long 
and  heated  debates  in  Congress,  the  Com 
promise  of  1850  was  agreed  on.  To  satisfy 
the  North,  California,  as  a  whole,  came  in  as 
a  free  State,  and  the  slave  trade  was  abol 
ished  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  To  sat 
isfy  the  South,  a  new  and  stringent  fugitive 
slave  law  was  agreed  on,  and  the  territories 
of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  were  organized 
with  no  restrictions  as  to  slavery. 

In  bringing  about  this  compromise,  Daniel 
Webster  was,  next  to  Clay,  the  most  con 
spicuous  figure.  He  was  the  favorite  son  of 
New  England  and  the  greatest  statesman 
in  all  the  North.  On  the  7th  of  March, 
1850,  Mr.  Webster  made  one  of  the  greatest 
speeches  of  his  life  on  the  Compromise  meas 
ures.  Rising  above  the  sectional  prejudices 
of  the  hour,  he  spoke  for  the  Constitution 
107 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

and  the  Union.  The  manner  in  which  he 
and  his  reputation  were  treated  by  popular 
historians  in  the  North,  for  half  a  century 
afterward,  on  account  of  this  speech,  is  the 
most  pathetic  and,  at  the  same  time,  the 
most  instructive  story  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  anti-slavery  crusade. 

Mr.  Webster  was  under  the  ban  of  North 
ern  public  opinion  for  all  this  half  a  century, 
not  because  of  inconsistency  between  that 
speech  and  his  former  avowals,  an  averment 
often  made  and  never  proven,  but  because 
he  was  consistent.  He  stood  squarely  upon 
his  record,  and  the  venom  of  the  assaults 
that  were  afterward  made  upon  him  was 
just  in  proportion  to  the  love  and  venera 
tion  which  had  been  his  before  he  offended. 
His  offence  was  that  he  would  not  move  with 
the  anti-slavery  movement.1  He  did  not 
stand  with  his  section  in  a  sectional  dispute. 

Henry  Clay,  old  and  feeble,  had  come 
back  into  the  Senate  to  render  his  last 
service  to  his  country.  He  was  the  author 
of  the  Compromise.  Daniel  Webster  was 
everywhere  known  as  the  champion  of  the 

1  McMaster  says:  "The  great  statesman  was  behind  the  times." 
— "Webster,"  p.  19. 

1 08 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Union.  Henry  Clay  was  known  as  the  "Old 
Man  Eloquent,"  and  he  now  spoke  with  all 
his  old-time  fire ;  but  Webster's  great  speech 
probably  had  more  influence  on  the  result. 

Before  taking  up  Mr.  Webster's  speech 
his  previous  attitude  toward  slavery  must 
be  noted.  The  purpose  of  the  friends  of  the 
Union  was,  of  course,  to  effect  a  compromise 
that  would,  if  possible,  put  an  end  to  sec 
tional  strife.  Compromise  means  concession, 
and  a  compromise  of  political  differences, 
made  by  statesmen,  may  involve  some  con 
cession  of  view  previously  held  by  those  who 
advocate  as  well  as  by  those  who  accept  it. 
Webster  thought  his  section  of  the  Union 
should  now  make  concessions. 

Fanaticism,  however,  concedes  nothing; 
it  never  compromises,  although  statesman 
ship  does.  One  of  the  most  notable  utter 
ances  of  Edmund  Burke  was: 

"All  government,  indeed  every  human  bene 
fit  and  enjoyment^  every  virtue  and  every 
prudent  act,  is  founded  on  compromise  and 
barter." 

Great  statesmen,  on  great  occasions, 
speak  not  only  to  their  countrymen  and 
for  the  time  being,  but  they  speak  to  all 
109 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

mankind  and  for  all  time.  So  spoke  Burke 
in  that  famous  sentence  when  advocating, 
in  the  British  Parliament  in  1776,  "concili 
ation  with  America";  and  so  did  Daniel 
Webster  speak,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  on  the  7th  of  March,  1850,  for  "the 
Constitution  and  the  Union."  If  George  III 
and  Lord  North  had  heeded  Burke,  and  if  the 
British  government  and  people,  from  that 
day  forth,  had  followed  the  wise  counsels 
given  in  that  speech  by  their  greatest  states 
man,  all  the  English-speaking  peoples  of  the 
world,  now  numbering  over  170,000,000, 
might  have  been  to-day  under  one  govern 
ment,  that  government  commanding  the 
peace  of  the  world.  And  if  all  the  people 
of  the  United  States  in  1850  and  from  that 
time  on,  had  heeded  the  words  of  Daniel 
Webster,  we  should  have  been  spared  the 
bloodiest  war  in  the  book  of  time;  every 
State  of  the  Union  would  have  been  left  free 
to  solve  its  own  domestic  problems,  and  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  these  problems 
would  have  been  solved  in  full  accord  with 
the  advancing  civilization  of  the  age. 

The  sole  charge  of  inconsistency  against 
Webster  that  has  in  it  a  shadow  of  truth 
no 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

relates  to  the  proposition  he  made  in  his 
speech  as  to  the  "Wilmot  proviso."  That 
celebrated  proviso  was  named  for  David 
Wilmot,  of  Pennsylvania,  its  author.  It 
provided  against  slavery  in  all  the  territory 
acquired  from  Mexico.  The  South  had  op 
posed  the  Wilmot  proviso  because  the  ter 
ritory  in  question,  much  of  it,  was  south 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  extended. 
Mr.  Webster  had  often  voted  for  the  Wil 
mot  proviso,  as  all  knew.  In  his  speech  for 
the  Compromise,  by  which  the  South  was 
urged  to  and  did  give  up  its  contentions  as 
to  the  admission  of  California,  and  its  con 
tentions  as  to  the  slave  trade  in  the  District 
of  Columbia,  Webster  argued  that  the  North 
might  forego  the  proviso  as  to  New  Mexico 
and  Arizona  for  the  reason  that  the  pro 
viso  was,  as  to  these  territories,  immaterial. 
Those  territories,  he  argued,  would  never 
come  in  as  slave  States,  because  the  God 
of  nature  had  so  determined.  Climate  and 
soil  would  forbid.  Time  vindicated  this 
argument.  In  1861  Charles  Francis  Adams 
said,  in  Congress,  that  New  Mexico,  open 
to  slave-holders  and  their  slaves  for  more 
than  ten  years,  then  had  only  twelve  slaves 
in 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

domiciled  on  the  surface  of  over  200,000 
square  miles  of  her  extent.1 

Daniel  Webster's  services  to  the  cause  of 
the  Union,  the  preservation  of  which  had 
been  the  passion  of  his  life,  had  been  abso 
lutely  unparalleled.  It  is  perhaps  true  that 
without  him  Abraham  Lincoln  and  the 
armies  of  the  Union  in  1861-65  would  have 
been  impossible.  The  sole  and,  as  he  then 
stated  and  as  time  proved,  immaterial  con 
cession  this  champion  of  the  Union  now 
(1850)  made  for  the  sake  of  preserving  the 
Union  was  his  proposition  as  to  New  Mex 
ico  and  Arizona. 

Henry  Clay  spoke  before  Webster.  These 
words  were  the  key-note  of  Clay's  great 
speech:  "In  my  opinion  the  body  politic 
cannot  be  preserved  unless  this  agitation, 
thJ£  distraction,  this  exasperation,  which  is 
going  on  between  the  two  sections  of  the 
country,  shall  cease." 

The  country  waited  with  anxiety  to  hear 
from  Webster.  Hundreds  of  suggestions 
and  appeals  went  to  him.  Both  sides  were 
hopeful.2  Anti-slavery  people  knew  his 

1  "Vindication  of  Webster,"  William  C.  Wilkinson,  p.  69, 
2McMaster's  "Webster." 

112 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

aversion  to  slavery.  He  had  never  coun 
tenanced  anti-slavery  agitation,  but  he  had 
voted  for  the  Wilmot  proviso.  They  knew, 
too,  that  he  had  long  been  ambitious  to  be 
President,  and,  carried  away  by  their  en 
thusiasm,  they  hoped  that  Webster  would 
swim  along  with  the  tide  that  was  sweeping 
over  the  majority  section  of  the  Union.  In 
view  of  Mr.  Webster's  past  record,  how 
ever,  it  would  be  difficult  to  believe  that 
Abolitionists  were  really  disappointed  in 
him  had  we  not  many  such  proofs  as  the 
following  stanza  from  Whittier's  ode,  pub 
lished  after  the  speech: 

Oh!  dumb  be  passing,  stormy  rage 

When  he  who  might 
Have  lighted  up  and  led  his  age 

Falls  back  in  night! 

The  conservatives  also  were  hopeful. 
They  knew  that,  though  Webster  had  al 
ways  been,  as  an  individual,  opposed  to  sla 
very,  he  had  at  all  times  stood  by  the  Con 
stitution,  as  well  as  the  Union.  At  no  time 
had  he  ever  qualified  or  retracted  these 
words  in  his  speech  at  Niblo's  Garden  in 
1839:  "Slavery,  as  it  exists  in  the  States,  is 
"3 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

beyond  the  reach  of  Congress.  It  is  a  con 
cern  of  the  States  themselves.  They  have 
never  submitted  it  to  Congress,  and  Con 
gress  has  no  rightful  power  over  it.  I  shall 
concur  therefore  in  no  act,  no  measure,  no 
menace,  no  indication  of  purpose  which  shall 
interfere  or  threaten  to  interfere  with  the  ex 
clusive  authority  of  the  several  States  over 
the  subject  of  slavery,  as  it  exists  within 
their  respective  limits.  All  this  appears 
to  me  to  be  matter  of  plain  imperative 
duty." 

Nullifying  the  fugitive  slave  law  was  a 
plain  "interference"  with  the  rights  of  the 
slave  States. 

Mr.  Webster's  intent,  when  he  spoke  on 
the  Compromise  measures,  is  best  explained 
by  his  own  words,  on  June  17,  while  these 
measures  were  still  pending:  "Sir,  my  ob 
ject  is  peace.  My  object  is  reconciliation. 
My  purpose  is  not  to  make  up  a  case  for  the 
North  or  a  case  for  the  South.  My  object  is 
not  to  continue  useless  and  irritating  con 
troversies.  I  am  against  agitators,  North 
and  South,  and  all  narrow  local  contests.  I 
am  an  American,  and  I  know  no  locality 
but  America." 

114 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

In  his  speech  made  on  the  yth  of  March 
he  dwelt  at  length  on  existing  conditions,  on 
the  attitude  of  the  North  toward  the  fugi 
tive  slave  law,  and  argued  fully  the  ques 
tions  involved  in  the  "personal  liberty" 
laws  passed  by  Northern  States.  Referring 
to  the  complaints  of  the  South  about  these, 
he  said:  "In  that  respect  the  South,  in  my 
judgment,  is  right  and  the  North  is  wrong. 
Every  member  of  every  Northern  legisla 
ture  is  bound  by  oath,  like  every  other  officer 
in  the  country,  to  support  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States;  and  the  article  of  the 
Constitution  which  says  to  these  States 
that  they  shall  deliver  up  fugitives  from  ser 
vice  is  as  binding  in  honor  and  conscience  as 
any  other  article.  No  man  fulfils  his  duty  in 
any  legislature  who  sets  himself  to  find  excuses, 
evasions,  escapes,  from  this  constitutional  ob 
ligation" 

And  further  on  he  said:  "Then,  sir,  there 
are  the  Abolition  societies,  of  which  I  am 
unwilling  to  speak,  but  in  regard  to  which 
I  have  very  clear  notions  and  opinions.  I 
do  not  think  them  useful.  /  think  their  oper 
ations  for  the  last  twenty  years  have  produced 
nothing  good  or  valuable.  ...  7  cannot  but 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

see  what  mischief  their  interference  with  the 
South  has  produced" 

In  these  statements  is  the  substance  of 
Webster's  offending. 

Webster's  speech  was  followed,  on  the 
nth  of  March,  by  the  speech  of  Senator 
Seward,  of  New  York,  in  the  same  debate. 
Quoting  the  fugitive  slave  provision  of 
the  Federal  Constitution,  Mr.  Seward  said  : 
"This  is  from  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  in  1787,  and  the  parties  were  the 
Republican  States  of  the  Union.  The  law 
of  nations  disavows  such  compacts;  the  law 
of  nature,  written  on  the  hearts  and  consciences 
of  freemen,  repudiates  them"1  The  people 
of  the  North,  instead  of  following  Webster, 
chose  to  follow  Seward,  the  apostle  of  a 
law  higher  than  the  Constitution;  and  when, 
ten  years  later,  it  appeared  to  them  that 
the  whole  North  had  given  in  its  adhesion 
to  the  "higher  law"  doctrine,  the  people  of 
eleven  Southern  States  seceded,  and  put 
over  themselves  in  very  substance  the  Con 
stitution  that  Seward  had  flouted  and  Web 
ster  had  pleaded  for  in  vain. 

1  Congressional   Globe,   3ist  Congress,    ist  session,  Appendix, 
p.  263. 

116 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Anti-slavery  enthusiasts  in  the  North  gen 
erally,  and  Abolitionists  especially,  in  their 
comments  on  Webster's  speech  scouted  the 
idea  that  the  preservation  of  the  Union 
depended  upon  the  faithful  execution  of  the 
fugitive  slave  law  or  the  cessation  of  anti- 
slavery  agitation.  "What,"  said  Theodore 
Parker,  "cast  off  the  North!  They  set  up 
for  themselves!  Tush!  Tush!  Fear  boys 
with  bugs!  ...  I  think  Mr.  Webster  knew 
there  was  no  danger  of  a  dissolution  of  the 
Union."  1 

The  immediate  effect  of  the  speech  was 
wonderful ;  congratulations  poured  in  upon 
Mr.  Webster  from  conservative  classes  in 
every  quarter,  and  he  must  have  felt  grati 
fied  to  know  that  he  had  contributed  greatly 
to  the  enactment  of  measures  that,  for  a 
time,  had  some  effect  in  allaying  sectional 
strife.  But  the  revilings  of  the  Abolition 
ists  prevailed,  and  it  turned  out  that  Dan 
iel  Webster,  great  as  he  was,  had  under 
taken  a  task  that  was  too  much  even  for 
him.  His  enemies  struck  out  boldly  at  once : 
and  years  afterward,  when  the  anti-slavery 
movement  that  Webster's  appeals  could 

1  "  Vindication  of  Webster,"  William  C.  Wilkinson,  p.  191. 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

not  arrest  had  culminated  in  secession,  and 
when  the  Union  had  been  saved  by  arms, 
the  triumphant  hosts  of  the  anti-slavery 
crusade  all  but  succeeded  in  writing  Daniel 
Webster  down  permanently  in  the  history 
of  his  country  as  an  apostate  from  principle 
for  the  sake  of  an  office  he  did  not  get. 
Here  is  their  verdict,  which  Mr.  Lodge,  a 
biographer  of  Webster,  passes  on  into 
history: 

"The  popular  verdict  has  been  given 
against  the  yth  of  March  speech,  and  that 
verdict  has  passed  into  history.  Nothing  can 
be  said  or  done  which  will  alter  the  fact 
that  the  people  of  this  country,  who  main 
tained  and  saved  the  Union,  have  passed  judg 
ment  on  Mr.  Webster,  and  condemned  what 
he  said  on  the  7th  of  March  as  wrong  in 
principle  and  mistaken  in  policy. " 

Here  are  specimens  of  the  assaults  that 
were  made  on  Webster  after  his  speech. 
They  are  selected  from  among  many  given 
by  one  of  his  biographers.1 

"'Webster/  said  Horace  Mann,  'is  a 
fallen  star!  Lucifer  descended  from  Heaven.' 
.  .  .  'Webster,'  said  Sumner,  'has  placed 

1  McMaster's  "Webster,"  p.  316  et  seq. 
118 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

himself  in  the  dark  list  of  apostates/  When 
Whittier  named  him  Ichabod,  and  mourned 
for  him  in  verse  as  one  dead,  he  did  but  ex 
press  the  feeling  of  half  New  England : 

'Let  not  the  land  once  proud  of  him 

Mourn  for  him  now, 
Nor  brand  with  deeper  shame  his  dim 
Dishonored  brow. 

Then  pay  the  reverence  of  old  days 

To  his  dead  fame! 
Walk  backward  with  averted  gaze 

And  hide  his  shame.' ' 

After  much  more  to  the  same  effect,  Pro 
fessor  McMaster  proceeds:  "The  attack  by 
the  press,  the  expressions  of  horror  that  rose 
from  New  England,  Webster  felt  keenly, 
but  the  absolute  isolation  in  which  he  was 
left  by  his  New  England  colleagues  cut  him 
to  the  quick."  l 

On  Mr.  Webster's  speech,  its  purpose  and 
effect,  we  have  this  opinion  from  Mr.  Lodge : 

"The  speech,  if  exactly  defined,  is  in  re- 

1  Professor  McMaster  in  the  chapter  preceding  that  containing 
these  extracts,  has  collected  much  evidence  to  show  that  Web 
ster  aspired  to  be  President,  and  the  biographer  entitles  the 
chapter,  "Longing  for  the  Presidency,"  apparently  the  author's 
clod  on  the  grave  of  a  buried  reputation. 

119 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

ality  a  powerful  effort,  not  for  a  compromise, 
or  for  the  fugitive  slave  law,  or  for  any  other 
one  thing,  but  to  arrest  the  whole  anti-slavery 
movement,  and  in  that  way  put  an  end  to  the 
danger  which  threatened  the  Union  and  restore 
harmony  to  the  jarring  sections" 

And  then  he  adds: 

"It  was  a  mad  project.  Mr.  Webster 
might  as  well  have  attempted  to  stay  the  in 
coming  tide  at  Marshfield  with  a  rampart  of 
sand,  as  to  check  the  anti-slavery  movement 
with  a  speech" 

To  undertake  at  this  time  to  arrest  the 
whole  anti-slavery  movement  by  holding  up 
the  Constitution  was  indeed  useless. 

Seward,  who  had  spoken  for  the  "higher 
law,"  was  riding  on  the  tide  of  anti-slavery 
sentiment  that  was  submerging  "the  Sage 
of  Marshfield,"  who  had  stood  for  the  Con 
stitution.  Seward's  reputation,  in  the  years 
following,  went  steadily  up,  while  Web 
ster's  was  going  down.  Webster  died,  in 
dejection,  in  1852. 

Seward,  at  Rochester,  in  1854,  later  on  in 
the  same  crusade,  made  another  famous  dec 
laration — there  was  an  "irrepressible  con 
flict  between  slavery  and  freedom."  The 
1 20 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

conflict  was  "  irrepressible/'  as  Seward  well 
knew;  and  this  was  simply  and  solely  be 
cause  the  anti-slavery  crusade  could  not  be 
suppressed.  Clay  and  Webster,  now  both 
dead  and  gone,  had  tried  it  in  vain.  Every 
one  knew  that  if,  in  1850,  or  at  any  other 
time,  the  anti-slavery  hosts  had  halted,  and 
asked  for,  or  consented  to,  peace,  they  could 
have  had  it  at  once. 

Mr.  Lodge,  in  the  following  paragraph, 
seems  to  have  almost  made  up  his  mind 
to  defend  Webster.  He  says:  "What  most 
shocked  the  North  were  his  utterances  in 
regard  to  the  fugitive  slave  law.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that,  under  the  Constitution,  the 
South  had  a  perfect  right  to  claim  the  extra 
dition  of  fugitive  slaves.  The  legal  argu 
ment  to  support  that  right  was  excellent" 
This  would  seem  to  justify  the  speech  in 
that  regard.  "But,"  Mr.  Lodge  adds,  "the 
Northern  people  could  not  feel  that  it  was 
necessary  for  Daniel  Webster  to  make  it." 
They  wanted  him  to  be  sectional  or  to  hold 
his  tongue.  Then  Mr.  Lodge  goes  on  to 
say:  "The  fugitive  slave  law  was  in  abso 
lute  conflict  with  the  awakened  conscience  and 
moral  sentiment  of  the  North" 

121 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

The  conscience  of  the  North  at  that  time, 
Mr.  Lodge  means,  was  a  higher  law  than  the 
Constitution;  and  Webster's  "excellent  ar 
gument,"  therefore,  fell  on  deaf  ears. 

No  American  historian  stands  higher  as 
an  authority  than  Mr.  Rhodes.  He  says 
on  page  161,  vol.  I,  of  his  "History  of  the 
United  States/'  published  in  1892:  "Until 
the  closing  years  of  our  century  a  dispassion 
ate  judgment  could  not  be  made  of  Webster; 
but  we  see  now  that  in  the  war  of  secession 
his  principles  were  mightier  than  those  of 
Garrison.  It  was  not '  No  Union  with  slave 
holders/  but  Liberty  and  Union  that  won." 

This  tribute  to  services  Webster  had  ren 
dered  to  the  Union  in  his  great  speech  in 
1850,  in  which  he  advocated  "Liberty  and 
Union,  now  and  forever/'  exactly  as  he  was 
advocating  it  in  1830,  is  just.  How  pathetic 
that  the  historian  was  impelled  also  to 
record  the  fact,  in  the  same  sentence,  that 
for  nearly  half  a  century  partisan  prejudice 
had  rendered  it  impossible  to  form  a  dis 
passionate  judgment  of  him  who  had  pleaded 
in  vain  for  the  Union  without  war! 

After  an  able  analysis  of  his  "7th  of 
March  speech,"  and  a  discussion  of  his 

122 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

record,  in  which  he  paralleled  Webster  and 
Edmund  Burke,  Mr.  Rhodes  declares: 
"His  dislike  of  slavery  was  strong,  but  his 
love  of  the  Union  was  stronger,  and  the  more 
powerful  motive  outweighed  the  other,  for 
he  believed  that  the  crusade  against  slavery 
had  arrived  at  a  point  where  its  further  prose- 
cution  was  hurtful  to  the  Union.  As  has  been 
said  of  Burke,  'He  changed  his  front  but 
he  never  changed  his  ground/"  *  J^3 

Daniel  Webster's  name  and  its  place  in 
history  may  be  likened  to  a  giant  oak,  a 
monarch  of  the  forest,  that,  while  towering 
high  above  all  others,  was  stripped  of  its 
branches;  for  a  time  it  stood,  a  rugged 
trunk,  robbed  of  its  glory  by  a  cyclone; 
but  its  roots  were  deep  down  in  the  rich 
earth;  the  storm  is  passing  away;  the  tree 
has  put  out  buds  again;  now  its  branches 
are  stretching  out  once  more  into  the  clear 
reaches  of  the  upper  air. 

Mr.  Rhodes  seems  to  be  the  first  historian 
of  note  to  do  justice  to  Daniel  Webster  and 
the  great  speech  which,  McMaster  takes 
pains  to  inform  us,  historians  have  written 
down  as  his  "yth  of  March  speech,"  in  spite 

1  Ib.,  p.  160. 
123 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Webster  himself  en 
titled  it  "The  Constitution  and  the  Union." 

Other  historians  besides  Mr.  Rhodes  have 
come  to  the  rescue  of  Webster's  speech  for 
"the  Constitution  and  the  Union."  Mr. 
John  Fiske  says  of  it  in  a  volume  (post 
humous)  published  in  1907:  "So  far  as  Mr. 
Webster's  moral  attitude  was  concerned, 
although  he  was  not  prepared  for  the  bitter 
hostility  that  his  speech  provoked  in  many 
quarters,  he  must  nevertheless  have  known 
it  was  quite  as  likely  to  injure  him  at  the 
North  as  to  gain  support  for  him  in  the 
South,  and  his  resolute  adoption  of  a  policy 
that  he  regarded  as  national  rather  than 
sectional  was  really  an  instance  of  high 
moral  courage." 

Mr.  William  C.  Wilkinson  has  recently 
written  an  able  "Vindication  of  Daniel 
Webster,"  and,  after  a  conclusive  argu 
ment  on  that  branch  of  his  subject,  he 
says:  "Webster's  consistency  stands  like 
a  rock  on  the  shore  after  the  fretful  waves 
are  tired  with  beating  upon  it  in  vain." 

1  "Daniel  Webster  and  the  Sentiment  of  Union,"  John  Fiske, 
"  Essays  Historical  and  Literary,"  pp.  408-9. 

2  "Daniel  Webster:  A  Vindication,"  p.  47. 

I24 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Mr.  E.  P.  Wheeler,  concluding  a  masterly 
sketch  of  Daniel  Webster,  setting  forth  his 
services  as  statesman  and  expounder  of 
the  Constitution,  and  not  deigning  to  notice 
the  partisan  charges  against  him,  concludes 
with  these  words: 

"Great  men  elevate  and  ennoble  their 
countrymen.  In  the  glory  of  Webster  we 
find  the  glory  of  our  whole  country." 

The  story  of  Daniel  Webster  and  his  great 
speech  in  1850  has  been  told  at  some  length 
because  it  is  instructive.  The  historians  who 
had  set  themselves  to  the  task  of  upholding 
the  idea  that  it  was  the  aggressiveness  of  the 
South,  during  the  controversy  over  slavery, 
and  not  that  of  the  North,  that  brought 
on  secession  and  war,  could  not  make  good 
their  contention  while  Daniel  Webster  and 
his  speech  for  "the  Constitution  and  the 
Union"  stood  in  their  way.  They,  there 
fore,  wrote  the  great  statesman  "down  and 
out,"  as  they  conceived.  But  Webster  and 
that  speech  still  stand  as  beacon  lights  in 
the  history  of  that  crusade.  The  attack 
came  from  the  North.  The  South,  standing 
for  its  constitutional  rights  in  the  Union, 
was  the  conservative  party.  Southern 
125 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

leaders,  it  is  true,  were,  during  the  contro 
versy  over  slavery,  often  aggressive,  but 
they  were  on  the  defensive — aggressive,  just 
as  Lee  was  when  he  made  his  campaign  into 
Pennsylvania  for  the  purpose  of  stopping 
the  invasion  of  his  own  land ;  and  the  South 
lost  in  her  political  campaign  just  for  the 
same  reason  that  Lee  lost  in  his  Gettysburg 
campaign:  numbers  and  resources  were 
against  her.  "The  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  against  Sisera." 

Mr.  Webster  in  his  great  speech  for  "the 
Constitution  and  the  Union,"  as  became  a 
great  statesman  pleading  for  conciliation, 
measured  the  terms  in  which  he  condemned 
"personal  liberty"  laws  and  Abolitionism. 
But  afterward,  irritated  by  the  attacks 
made  upon  him,  he  naturally  spoke  out 
more  emphatically.  McMaster  quotes  sev 
eral  expressions  from  his  speeches  and  letters 
replying  to  these  assaults,  and  says:  "His 
hatred  of  Abolitionists  and  Free-soilers  grew 
stronger  and  stronger.  To  him  these  men 
were  a  "band  of  sectionalists,  narrow  of 
mind,  wanting  in  patriotism,  without  a 
spark  of  national  feeling,  and  quite  ready 
to  see  the  Union  go  to  pieces  if  their  own 
126 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

selfish  ends  were  gained."  Such,  if  this  is 
a  fair  summing  up  of  his  views,  was  Web 
ster's  final  opinion  of  those  who  were 
carrying  on  the  great  anti-slavery  crusade.1 

1  McMaster's  "  Webster,"  p.  340. 


127 


CHAPTER  VII 
EFFORTS  FOR   PEACE 

THE  desire  for  peace  in  1850  was  wide 
spread.  Union  loving  people,  North 
and  South,  hoped  that  the  Compromise 
would  result  in  a  cessation  of  the  strife  that 
had  so  long  divided  the  section;  and  the 
election  of  Franklin  Pierce,  in  1852,  as 
President,  on  a  platform  strongly  approv 
ing  that  Compromise,  was  promising.  But 
anti-slavery  leaders,  instead  of  being  con 
vinced  by  such  arguments  as  those  of  Web 
ster,  were  deeply  offended  by  the  contention 
that  legislators,  in  passing  personal  liberty 
laws,  had  violated  their  oaths  to  support 
the  Constitution.  They  were  angered  also 
by  the  presumptuous  attempt  to  "arrest 
the  whole  anti-slavery  movement." 

The  new  fugitive  slave  law  was  strin 
gent;  it  did  not  give  jury  trial;  it  required 
bystanders  to  assist  the  officers  in  "  slave- 
catching,"  etc.  For  these  and  other  reasons 
the  law  was  assailed  as  unconstitutional. 
128 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

All  these  contentions  were  overruled  by 
the  Supreme  Court  when  a  case  eventually 
came  before  it.  The  court  decided  that 
the  act  was,  in  all  its  provisions,  fully 
authorized  by  the  Constitution.1  But  in 
their  present  mood,  no  law  that  was  effi 
cient  would  have  been  satisfactory  to  the 
multitudes  of  people,  by  no  means  all 
"  Abolitionists,"  who  had  already  made  up 
their  minds  against  the  "wicked"  provision 
of  the  Constitution  that  required  the  de 
livery  of  fugitive  slaves.  This  deep-seated 
feeling  of  opposition  to  the  return  to  their 
masters  of  escaping  slaves  was  soon  to  be 
wrought  up  to  a  high  pitch  by  a  novel  that 
went  into  nearly  every  household  through 
out  the  North— "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  On 
its  appearance  the  poet  Whittier,  who  had 
so  ferociously  attacked  Webster  in  the  verses 
quoted  in  the  last  chapter,  "offered  up 
thanks  for  the  fugitive  slave  law,  for  it  gave 
us 'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.'" 

Rufus  Choate,  a  celebrated  lawyer  and 
Whig  leader,  is  reported  to  have  said  of 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin":  "That  book  will 
make  two  millions  of  Abolitionists."  Draw- 

1  Ableman  v.  Boothe,  21  How.,  506. 
129 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

ing,  as  it  did,  a  very  dark  picture  of  slavery, 
it  aroused  sympathy  for  the  escaping  slave 
and  pictured  in  glowing  colors  the  dear, 
sweet  men  and  women  who  dared,  for  his 
sake,  the  perils  of  the  road  in  the  darkness 
of  night  and  all  the  dangers  of  the  law. 

(Mrs.  Stowe  was  making  heroes  of  law 
breakers,  preaching  the  higher  law. 

Mrs.  Stowe  declared  she  had  not  written 
the  book  for  political  effect;  she  certainly 
did  not  anticipate  the  marvellous  results 
that  followed  it.  That  book  made  vast 
multitudes  of  its  readers  ready  for  the  new 
sectional  and  anti-slavery  party  that  was  to 
be  organized  two  years  after  its  appearance. 
It  was  the  most  famous  and  successful  novel 
ever  written.  It  was  translated  into  every 
language  that  has  a  literature,  and  has  been 
more  read  by  American  people  than  any 
other  book  except  the  Bible.  As  a  picture 
of  what  was  conceivable  under  the  laws 
relating  to  slavery  there  was  a  basis  for  it. 
Though  there  were  laws  limiting  the  master's 
power,  cruelty  was  nevertheless  possible. 

Here,  then,  Mrs.  Stowe's  imagination  had 
full  scope.  Her  book,  however,  has  in  it 
none  of  the  strident  harshness,  none  of  the 
130 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

purblind  ferocity  of  Garrison,  in  whose  eyes 
every  slave-holder  was  a  fiend.  "Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin"  assailed  a  system;  it  did  not 
assault  personally,  as  the  arch-agitator  did, 
every  man  and  woman  to  whom  slaves  had 
come,  whether  by  choice  or  chance.  Light 
and  shadow  and  the  play  of  human  nature 
made  Mrs.  Stowe's  picture  as  attractive  in 
many  of  its  pages  as  it  was  repulsive  and 
unfair  in  others.  Mrs.  Shelby  was  a  type  of 
many  a  noble  mistress,  a  Christian  woman, 
and  when  financial  misfortunes  compelled 
the  sale  of  the  Shelby  slaves  and  the  sepa 
ration  of  families,  we  have  not  only  what 
might  have  been,  but  what  sometimes  was, 
one  of  the  evils  of  slavery,  which,  by  reason 
of  the  prevailing  agitation,  the  humanity 
of  the  age  could  not  remedy.  But  Mrs. 
Stowe's  slave-master,  Legree,  was  impos 
sible.  The  theory  was  inconceivable  that 
it  was  cheaper  to  work  to  death  in  seven 
years  a  slave  costing  a  thousand  dollars, 
than  to  work  him  for  forty  years.  Millions 
of  our  people,  however,  have  accepted 
"Uncle  Tom"  as  a  fact,  and  have  wept  over 
him;  they  have  accepted  also  as  a  fact  the 
monster  Legree. 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin "  lives  to-day  as  a 
classic  on  book  shelves  and  as  a  popular 
play.  The  present  generation  get  most  of 
their  opinions  about  slavery  as  it  was  in 
the  South  from  its  pages,  and  not  one  in 
ten  thousand  of  those  who  read  it  ever 
thinks  of  the  inconsistency  between  the 
picture  of  slavery  drawn  there  and  that 
other  picture,  which  all  the  world  now  knows 
of — the  Confederate  soldier  away  in  the 
army,  his  wife  and  children  at  home  faith 
fully  protected  by  slaves — not  a  case  of 
violence,  not  even  a  single  established  case, 
during  four  years,  although  there  were  four 
millions  of  negroes  in  the  South,  of  that 
crime  against  white  women  that,  after  the 
reconstruction  had  demoralized  the  freed- 
men,  became  so  common  in  that  section. 

The  unwavering  fidelity  during  the  four 
years  of  war  of  so  many  slaves  to  the  families 
of  their  absent  masters,  and  the  fact  that 
those  who,  during  that  war,  left  their  homes 
to  seek  their  freedom  invariably  went  with 
out  doing  any  vengeful  act,  is  a  phenomenon 
that  speaks  for  itself.  It  tells  of  kindly  re 
lations  between  master  and  slave.  It  is  not 
to  be  denied  that  where  the  law  gave  so 
132 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

much  power  to  the  master  there  were  in 
dividual  instances  of  cruelty,  nor  is  it  sup- 
posable  that  there  were  not  many  slaves 
who  were  revengeful;  but  at  the  same  time 
there  was,  quite  naturally,  among  slaves 
who  were  all  in  like  case,  a  more  clannish 
and  all-pervading  public  opinion  than  could 
have  been  found  elsewhere.  It  was  that  all- 
pervading  and  rigid  standard  of  kindly  feel 
ing  among  the  slaves  to  their  masters  that 
made  the  rule  universal — fidelity  toward  the 
master's  family,  at  least  to  the  extent  of 
inflicting  no  injury. 

What  a  surprise  to  many  this  conduct  of 
the  slave  was  may  be  gathered  from  a  telling 
Republican  speech  made  by  Carl  Schurz 
during  the  campaign  of  i860.1  A  devotee 
of  liberty,  recently  a  revolutionist  in  his 
native  land,  and,  like  other  foreigners,  dis 
regarding  all  constitutional  obstacles,  Mr. 
Schurz  had  naturally  espoused  the  cause  of 
anti-slavery  in  this  country.  He  had  ab 
sorbed  the  views  of  his  political  associates 
and  now  contended  that  secession  was  an 
empty  threat  and  that  secession  was  im 
possible.  "  The  mere  anticipation  of  a  negro 

*Fite,  "Presidential  Campaign  of  1860,"  p.  243. 
133 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

insurrection,"  he  said,  "will  paralyze  the 
whole  South. "  And,  after  ridiculing  the 
alarm  created  by  the  John  Brown  invasion, 
the  orator  said  that  in  case  of  a  war  between 
the  South  and  the  North,  "they  will  not 
have  men  enough  to  quiet  their  friends  at 
home ;  what  will  they  have  to  oppose  to  the 
enemy?  Every  township  will  want  its  home 
regiment;  every  plantation  its  garrison ;  and 
what  will  be  left  for  its  field  army?" 

Slavery  in  the  South  eventually  proved 
to  be,  instead  of  a  weakness,  an  element 
of  strength  to  the  Confederates,  and  Mr. 
Lincoln  finally  felt  himself  compelled  to 
issue  his  proclamation  of  emancipation  as 
a  military  necessity — the  avowed  purpose 
being  to  deprive  the  Confederates  of  the 
slaves  who  were  by  their  labor  supporting 
their  armies  in  the  field. 

The  faithfulness  during  the  war  of  the 
slave  to  his  master  has  been  a  lesson  to  the 
Northerner,  and  it  has  been  a  lesson,  too,  to 
the  Southerner.  It  argues  that  the  danger 
of  bloody  insurrections  was  perhaps  not 
as  great  as  had  been  apprehended  where 
incendiary  publications  were  sent  among 
them.  That  danger,  however,  did  exist,  and 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

if  the  fear  of  it  was  exaggerated,  it  was 
nevertheless  real,  and  was  traceable  to  the 
Abolitionists. 

The  rights  of  the  South  in  the  territories 
had  now  been  discussed  for  years,  and 
Stephen  A.  Douglas,  a  Democratic  senator 
from  Illinois,  had  reached  the  conclusion 
that  under  the  Constitution  Southerner  and 
Northerner  had  exactly  the  same  right  to 
carry  their  property,  whatever  it  might  be, 
into  the  territories,  which  had  been  pur 
chased  with  the  common  blood  and  treasure 
of  both  sections,  a  view  afterward  sustained 
by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
in  the  Dred  Scott  case.  Douglas,  "entirely 
of  his  own  motion," l  introduced,  and 
Congress  passed,  such  a  bill — the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  act.  The  new  act  replaced  the 
Missouri  Compromise.  This  the  Southern 
ers  considered  had  been  a  dead  letter  for 
years.  Every  "personal  liberty"  law  passed 
by  a  Northern  State  was  a  violation  of  it. 

Ambition  was  now  playing  its  part  in  the 
sectional  controversy.  Douglas  was  a  Dem 
ocrat  looking  to  the  presidency  and  had 

1  "Parties  and  Slavery,"  Theodore  Clarke  Smith,  professor  of 
history  in  Williams  College,  p.  96. 

135 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

here  made  a  bid  for  Southern  support.  On 
the  other  hand  was  Seward,  an  "old  line 
Whig/'  aspiring  to  the  same  office.  The 
South  had  been  the  dominant  element  in 
national  politics  and  the  North  was  getting 
tired  of  it.  Seward's  idea  was  to  organize 
all  the  anti-slavery  voters  and  to  appeal  at 
the  same  time  to  the  pride  and  jealousy  of 
the  North  as  a  section. 

The  immediate  effect  of  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  act  was  to  aggravate  sectionalism. 
It  opened  up  the  territory  of  Kansas,  allow 
ing  it  to  come  into  the  Union  with  or  with 
out  slavery,  as  it  might  choose.  Slave  State 
and  free  State  adventurers  rushed  into 
the  new  territory  and  struggled,  and  even 
fought,  for  supremacy.  The  Southerners 
lost.  Their  resources  could  not  match  the 
means  of  organized  anti-slavery  societies, 
and  the  result  was  an  increase,  North  and 
South,  of  sectional  animosity. 

The  overwhelming  defeat  of  the  old  Whig 
party  in  1852  presaged  its  dissolution.  Un 
til  that  election,  both  the  Whig  and  Demo 
cratic  parties  had  been  national,  each  en 
deavoring  to  hold  and  acquire  strength, 
North  and  South,  and  each  combating,  as 
136 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

best  it  could,  the  spirit  of  sectionalism  that 
had  been  steadily  growing  in  the  North,  and 
South  as  well,  ever  since  the  rise  of  Aboli 
tionism.  Both  these  old  parties  had  watched 
with  anxiety  the  increase  of  anti-slavery 
sentiment  in  the  North.  Both  parties 
feared  it.  Alliance  with  the  anti-slavery 
North  would  deprive  a  party  of  support 
South  and  denationalize  it.  For  years  prior 
to  1852  the  drift  of  Northern  voters  who 
were  opposed  to  slavery  had  been  as  to 
the  two  national  parties  toward  the  Whigs, 
and  the  tendency  of  conservative  Northern 
ers  had  been  toward  the  Democratic  party. 
Thus  the  great  body  of  the  Whig  voters  in 
the  North  had  become  imbued  with  anti- 
slavery  sentiments,  and  now,  with  no  hope 
of  victory  as  a  national  party  and  left  in  a 
hopeless  minority,  the  majority  of  that  old 
party  in  that  section  were  ready  to  join  a 
sectional  party  when  it  should  be  formed 
two  years  later.  William  H.  Seward  was 
still  a  Whig  when  he  made  in  the  United 
States  Senate  his  anti-slavery  "higher  law" 
speech  of  1850. 

The  Kansas-Nebraska  act  was  a  political 
blunder.    The  South,  on  any  dispassionate 
137 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

consideration,  could  not  have  expected  to 
make  Kansas  a  slave  State.  The  act  was  a 
blunder,  too,  because  it  gave  the  opponents 
of  the  Democratic  party  a  plausible  pre 
text  for  the  contention,  which  they  put 
forth  then  and  which  has  been  persisted  in 
till  this  day,  that  the  new  Republican  party, 
immediately  thereafter  organized,  was  called 
into  existence  by,  and  only  by,  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  act. 

As  far  back  as  1850  it  was  clear  that  a  new 
party,  based  on  the  anti-slavery  sentiment 
that  had  been  created  by  twenty  years 
of  agitation,  was  inevitable.  Mr.  Rhodes, 
speaking  of  conditions  then,  says:  "It  was, 
moreover,  obvious  to  an  astute  politician 
like  Seward,  and  probably  to  others,  that  a 
dissolution  of  parties  was  imminent;  that 
to  oppose  the  extension  of  slavery,  the  dif 
ferent  anti-slavery  elements  must  be  organized 
as  a  whole;  it  might  be  called  Whig  or  some 
other  name,  but  it  would  be  based  on  the 
principle  of  the  Wilmot  proviso"1 — the 
meaning  of  which  was,  no  more  slave 
States. 

Between    1850  and   the   passage   of  the 

'"Rhodes,"  vol.  I,  p.  192. 
'    I38 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Kansas-Nebraska  act  in  1854,  new  impulse 
had  been  given  anti-slavery  sentiment  by 
fierce  assaults  on  the  new  fugitive  slave  law 
and,  as  has  been  seen,  by  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin/'  The  Kansas-Nebraska  act  did 
serve  as  a  cry  for  the  rallying  of  all  anti- 
slavery  voters.  That  was  all.  It  was  a 
drum-call,  in  answer  to  which  soldiers  al 
ready  enlisted  fell  into  ranks,  under  a  new 
banner.  Any  other  drum-call — the  appli 
cation  of  another  slave  State  for  admission 
into  the  Union — would  have  served  quite 
as  well.  Thus  the  Republican  party  came 
into  existence  in  1854.  Mr.  Rhodes  sums  up 
the  reason  for  the  existence  of  the  new  party 
and  what  it  subsequently  accomplished 
in  the  following  pregnant  sentence,  "The 
moral  agitation  had  accomplished  its  work, 
the  cause  (of  anti-slavery)  .  .  .  was  to  be 
consigned  to  a  political  party  that  brought  to 
a  successful  conclusion  the  movement  begun 
by  the  moral  sentiment  of  the  community/'1 
— which  successful  conclusion  was,  of  course, 
the  freeing  of  the  slaves  by  a  successful  war. 

For  a  time  the  new  Republican  party 
had  a  powerful  competitor  in  another  new 

1  Vol.  I,  p.  66. 
139 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

organization.  This  was  the  American  or 
Know-Nothing  party.  This  other  aspirant 
for  power  made  an  honest  effort  to  revitalize 
the  old  Whig  party  under  a  new  name  and, 
by  gathering  in  all  the  conservatives  North 
and  South,  to  put  an  end  to  sectionalism. 
Its  signal  failure  conveys  an  instructive  les 
son.  After  many  and  wide-spread  rumors 
of  its  coming,  the  birth  of  the  American 
party  was  formally  announced  in  1854.  It 
had  been  organized  in  secret  and  was  bound 
together  with  oaths  and  passwords;  its 
members  delighted  to  mystify  inquirers  by 
refusing  to  answer  questions,  and  soon  they 
got  the  name  of  "Know-Nothings."  The 
party  had  grown  out  of  the  "Order  of  the 
Star  Spangled  Banner,"  organized  in  1850 
to  oppose  the  spread  of  Catholicism  and 
indiscriminate  immigration — the  two  dan 
gers  that  were  said  to  threaten  American 
institutions. 

The  American  party  made  its  appeal: 
For  the  Union  and  against  sectionalism; 
for  Protestantism,  the  faith  of  the  Fathers, 
against  Catholicism  that  was  being  imported 
by  foreigners;  its  shibboleth  was  "America 
for  the  Americans." 

140 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

The  Americans  or  Know-Nothings  every 
where  put  out  in  1854  full  tickets  and 
showed  at  once  surprising  strength.  In  the 
fall  elections  of  that  year  they  polled  over 
one-fourth  of  all  the  votes  in  New  York,  two- 
fifths  in  Pennsylvania,  and  over  two-thirds 
in  Massachusetts,  where  they  made  a  clean 
sweep  of  the  State  and  Federal  offices.1 

They  struck  directly  at  sectionalism  by 
exacting  of  their  adherents  the  following 
oath: 

"You  do  further  swear  that  you  will  not 
vote  for  any  one  .  .  .  whom  you  know  or 
believe  to  be  in  favor  of  a  dissolution  of  the 
Union  ...  or  who  is  endeavoring  to  pro 
duce  that  result." 

The  effect  of  this  oath  at  the  South  was 
almost  magical.  The  Whig  party  there 
was  speedily  absorbed  by  the  Americans, 
and  Southern  Democrats  by  thousands 
joined  the  new  party  that  promised  to  save 
the  Union.2  But  the  attitude  of  the  North- 


1  Smith,  "Parties  and  Slavery,"  pp.  118-20. 

2  The  writer's  father,  who  had  been  a  nullifier  and  a  lifelong 
follower  of  Calhoun,  joined  the  Know-Nothings  in  the  hope  of 
saving  the  Union,  but  withdrew  when  he  found  that  in  the  North 
the  party  was  not  true  to  its  Union  pledges.     Here  was  a  typical 
case  of  Southern  unwillingness  to  resort  to  secession. 

141 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

ern  and  Southern  members  of  the  American 
party  soon  became  fundamentally  different. 
Southerners  saw  their  Northern  allies  in 
Vermont,  Maine,  and  Massachusetts  pass 
ing  "personal  liberty"  laws.1 

The  Know-Nothings  were  strong  enough 
in  the  elections  of  1855  to  directly  check  the 
progress  of  the  new  Republican  party;  but 
the  American  party,  though  it  succeeded  in 
electing  a  Speaker  of  the  national  House 
of  Representatives  in  February,  1856,  soon 
afterward  went  down  to  defeat.  Even 
though  led  by  such  patriots  as  John  Bell,  of 
Tennessee,  and  Edward  Everett,  of  Massa 
chusetts,  it  could  not  stand  against  the 
storm  of  passion  that  had  been  aroused  by 
the  crusade  against  slavery. 

There  was  a  fierce  and  protracted  struggle 
between  the  pro-slavery  and  anti-slavery 
men  in  Kansas  for  possession  of  the  territo 
rial  government.  Rival  constitutions  were 
submitted  to  Congress,  and  the  debates 
over  these  were  extremely  bitter.  In  their 
excitement  the  Democrats  again  delighted 
their  adversaries  by  committing  what  now 
seems  to  have  been  another  blunder.  They 

llb.,  pp.  138-9. 
I42 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

advocated  the  admission  of  Kansas  under 
the  "Lecompton  Constitution/'  A  review 
of  the  conflicting  evidence  appears  to  show 
that  the  Southerners  were  fairly  outnum 
bered  in  Kansas  and  that  the  Lecompton 
Constitution  did  not  express  the  will  of  the 
people.1 

While  "the  war  in  Kansas"  was  going  on, 
Charles  Sumner,  an  Abolitionist  from  Mas 
sachusetts,  delivered  in  the  Senate  a  speech 
of  which  he  wrote  his  friends  beforehand:  £ 

"I  shall  pronounce  the  most  thorough  Phi 
lippic  ever  delivered  in  a  legislative  body."  *0 
He  was  a  classical  scholar.    His  purpose  was           * 
to  stir  up  in  the  North  a  greater  jury  against 
the  South  than  Demosthenes  had  aroused  in    ^S 
Athens  against  its  enemies ,  the  Macedonians,  fr 
His  speech  occupied  two  daysJ^Slay  28  and 
29>  ^SSTT  At  its  conclusion,  Senator  Cass, 
of  Michigan,  arose  at  once  and  pronounced 
it  "the  most  un-American  and  unpatriotic 
that  ever  grated  on  the  ears  of  this  high 
body."     The  speech  attacked,  without  any 
sufficient  excuse,  the  personal  character  of 
an  absent  senator,  Butler  of  South  Caro 
lina,  a  gentleman  of  high  character  and  older 

1  Theodore  Clarke  Smith,  "Parties  and  Slavery." 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

than  Sumner.  Among  other  unfounded 
charges,  it  accused  him  of  falsehood.  Pres 
ton  Brooks,  a  representative  from  South 
Carolina,  attacked  Sumner  in  the  Senate 
chamber  during  a  recess  of  that  body  and 
beat  him  unmercifully  with  a  cane.  The 
provocation  was  bitter,  indeed,  but  Brooks's 
assault  was  unjustifiable.  Nevertheless,  the 
exasperated  South  applauded  it,  while  the 
North  glorified  Sumner  as  a  martyr  for  free 
speech. 

In  less  than  two  years  the  new  Republican 
party  had  absorbed  all  the  Abolition  voters, 
and  in  the  election  of  1856  was  in  the  field 
with  its  candidates  for  the  presidency  and 
vice-presidency — Fremont  and  Dayton— 
upon  a  platform  declaring  it  the  duty  of 
Congress  to  abolish  in  the  territories  "  those 
twin  relics  of  barbarism,  polygamy  and 
slavery." 

Excitement  during  that  election  was  in 
tense.  Rufus  Choate,  the  great  Massachu 
setts  lawyer,  theretofore  a  Whig,  voiced 
the  sentiment  of  conservatives  when  he  said 
it  was  the  "duty  of  every  one  to  prevent  the 
madness  of  the  times  from  working  its  mad- 
144 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

dest  act — the  permanent  formation  and  the 
actual  present  triumph  of  a  party  which 
knows  one-half  of  America  only  to  hate  it," 
etc. 

Senator  Toombs,  of  Georgia,  said:  "The 
object  of  Fremont's  friends  is  the  conquest 
of  the  South.  I  am  content  that  they  shall 
own  us  when  they  conquer  us." 

The  Democrats  elected  Buchanan;  Demo 
crats  174  electoral  votes;  Republicans  74, 
all  Northern;  and  the  Know-Nothings, 
combined  with  a  remnant  of  Whigs,  8. 

The  work  of  sectionalism  was  nearly 
completed. 

The  extremes  to  which  some  of  the  South 
ern  people  now  resorted  show  the  madness  of 
the  times.  They  encouraged  filibustering 
expeditions  to  capture  Cuba  and  Nicaragua. 
These  wild  ventures  were  absolutely  inde 
fensible.  They  had  no  official  sanction  and 
were  only  spontaneous  movements,  but  they 
met  with  favor  from  the  Southern  public, 
the  outgrowth  of  a  feeling  that,  if  these 
countries  should  be  captured  and  annexed 
as  slave  States,  the  South  could  the  better, 
by  their  aid,  defend  its  rights  in  the  Union. 
The  Wanderer  and  one  or  two  other  vessels, 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

contrary  to  the  laws  of  the  United  States, 
imported  slaves  from  Africa,  and  when  the 
participants  were,  some  of  them,  indicted, 
Southern  juries  absolutely  refused  to  con 
vict. 

"Judgment  had  fled  to  brutish  beasts, 
And  men  had  lost  their  reason." 

When  later  the  Southern  States  had  se 
ceded  and  formed  a  government  of  their 
own  their  constitution  absolutely  prohibited 
the  slave  traffic. 


146 


CHAPTER  VIII 

INCOMPATIBILITY  OF  SLAVERY  AND 
FREEDOM 

THAT  it  was  possible  for  slave  States 
and  free  States  to  coexist  under  our 
Federal  Constitution  was  the  belief  of  its 
framers  and  of  most  of  our  people  down  to 
1861.  The  first  to  announce  the  absolute 
impossibility  of  such  coexistence  seems  to 
have  been  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  In 
1840,  at  Lynn,  Massachusetts,  the  Essex 
County  Anti-Slavery  Society  adopted  this 
resolution,  offered  by  him: 

"That  freedom  and  slavery  are  natural 
and  irreconcilable  enemies;  that  it  is  morally 
impossible  for  them  to  endure  together  in 
the  same  nation,  and  that  the  existence  of 
the  one  can  only  be  secured  by  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  other."1 

Garrison's  remedy  was  disunion.  Near 
that  time  his  paper's  motto  was  "No  Union 
with  Slave-Holders." 

1  Garrison's  "Garrison." 
147 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

The  next  to  announce  the  idea  of  the  in 
compatibility  of  slave  States  and  free  States 
seems  to  have  been  one  who  did  not  dream 
of  disunion.  No  such  thought  was  in  the 
mind  of  Abraham  Lincoln  when,  in  a  speech 
at  Springfield,  Illinois,  June  15,  1858,  he 
said : 

"A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand. 
I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure  perma 
nently  half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  ex 
pect  the  Union  to  be  divided.  It  will  become 
one  thing  or  the  other.  Either  the  opponents 
of  slavery  will  arrest  the  further  spread  of 
it,  and  place  it  where  the  public  mind  will 
rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in  the  course  of 
ultimate  extinction;  or  its  advocates  will  push 
it  forward  until  it  shall  become  alike  lawful 
in  all  the  States — old  as  well  as  new — North 
as  well  as  South/' 

When  the  Southerners  read  that  state 
ment  they  concluded  that,  as  Mr.  Lincoln 
knew  very  well  that  the  South  could  not,  if 
it  would,  force  slavery  on  the  North,  he 
was  announcing  the  intention  of  his  party 
to  place  slavery  "in  course  of  ultimate  ex 
tinction/'  constitution  or  no  constitution. 

Senator  Seward,  at  Rochester,  New  York, 
148 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

some  weeks  later,  reannounced  the  doctrine, 
declaring  that  the  contest  was  "an  irre 
pressible  conflict  between  opposing  and  en 
during  forces;  and  it  means  that  the  United 
States  must  and  will,  sooner  or  later,  become 
either  an  entirely  slave-holding  nation  or 
entirely  a  free  labor  nation." 

The  utterances  of  Lincoln  and  Seward 
were  distinctly  radical.  The  question  was, 
would  this  radical  idea  ultimately  dominate 
the  Republican  party? 

Less  than  eighteen  months  after  the  an 
nouncement  in  1858  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
"irrepressible  conflict/'  John  Brown  raided 
Virginia  to  incite  insurrections.  With  a  few 
followers  and  1,300  stands  of  arms  for  the 
slaves  who  were  to  join  him,  he  captured  the 
United  States  arsenal  at  Harper's  Ferry. 
Only  a  few  slaves  came  to  him  and,  after  a 
brief  struggle,  with  some  bloodshed,  Brown 
was  captured,  tried  by  a  jury,  and  hanged. 

In  the  South  the  excitement  was  intense; 
the  horror  and  indignation  in  that  section 
it  is  impossible  to  describe.  Brown  was  al 
ready  well  known  to  the  public.  He  was 
not  a  lunatic.  Not  long  before  this,  in  Kan 
sas,  "at  the  head  of  a  small  group  of  men, 
149 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

including  two  of  his  sons  and  a  son-in-law, 
he  went  at  night  down  Pottowattamie 
Creek,  stopping  at  three  houses.  The  men 
who  lived  in  them  were  well  known  pro- 
slavery  men ;  they  seem  to  have  been  rough 
characters;  their  most  specific  offence  (ac 
cording  to  Sanborn,  Brown's  biographer  and 
eulogist)  was  the  driving  from  his  home,  by 
violent  threats,  of  an  inoffensive  old  man. 
John  Brown  and  his  party  went  down  the 
creek,  called  at  one  after  the  other  of  three 
houses,  took  five  men  away  from  their 
wives  and  children,  and  deliberately  shot 
one  and  hacked  the  others  to  death  with 
swords."1 

Quite  a  number  of  people,  some  of  them 
men  of  eminence  in  the  North,  aided  Brown 
in  his  enterprise.  Among  the  men  of  repute 
were  Gerrit  Smith,  a  former  candidate  for 
the  presidency;  and  Theodore  Parker,  Dr. 
Howe,  and  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson, 
of  Boston,  who  were  all  members  of  a  "se 
cret  committee  to  collect  money  and  arms 
for  the  expedition."  With  them  was  F.  S. 
Sanborn,  who  has  since  the  war  vauntingly 

1  "The  Negro    and    the    Nation,"    George    Spring    Merriam, 
p.  120. 

ISO 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

revealed  the  scheme  in  his  "Life  of  John 
Brown."  l 

Sanborn  intimates  that  Henry  Wilson, 
subsequently  vice-president,  was  more  or 
less  privy  to  the  design.2  At  various  places 
in  the  North  church  bells  were  tolled  on 
the  day  of  John  Brown's  execution;  meet 
ings  were  held  and  orators  extolled  him  as 
a  martyr.  Emerson,  the  greatest  thinker  in 
all  that  region,  declared  that  if  John  Brown 
was  hanged  he  would  glorify  the  gallows  as 
Jesus  glorified  the  cross;  and  now  many 
Southern  men  who  loved  the  Union  reluc 
tantly  concluded  that  separation  was  in 
evitable.  John  Bell,  of  Tennessee,  Union 
candidate  for  President  in  1860,  is  said  to 
have  cried  like  a  child  when  he  heard  of 
Brown's  raid. 

The  great  body  of  the  Northern  people 
condemned  John  Brown's  expedition  with 
out  stint.  Edward  Everett,  voicing  the 
opinion  of  all  who  were  really  conservative, 
said  of  Brown's  raid,  in  a  speech  at  Faneuil 
Hall,  that  its  design  was  to  "let  loose  the 
hell  hounds  of  a  servile  insurrection,  and  to 
bring  on  a  struggle  which,  for  magnitude, 

1  Sanborn's  "Life  of  John  Brown,"  p.  466.  2  /&.,  p.  515. 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

atrocity,  and  horror,  would  have  stood  alone 
in  the  history  of  the  world." 

But  they  who  had  been  preaching  the 
"irrepressible  conflict,"  they  whom  public 
opinion  might  hold  responsible,  did  not  feel 
precisely  as  Mr.  Everett  did.  They  were 
concerned  about  political  consequences,  as 
appears  from  a  letter  written  somewhat 
later  during  the  State  canvass  in  New  York 
by  Horace  Greeley  to  Schuyler  Colfax. 
Horace  Greeley  afterward  proved  himself 
in  many  ways  a  broad-minded,  magnani 
mous  man,  but  now  he  wrote:  "Do  not  be 
downhearted  about  the  old  John  Brown 
business.  Its  present  effect  is  bad  and  throws 
a  heavy  load  on  us  in  this  State  .  .  .  but 
the  ultimate  effect  is  to  be  good.  .  .  .  It  will 
drive  the  slave  power  to  new  outrages.  .  .  .  It 
presses  on  the  irrepressible  conflict"1 

The  fact  that  such  a  man  as  Horace  Gree 
ley  was  taking  comfort  because  that  outrage 
would  "drive  the  slave  power  to  new  out 
rages"  J  throws  a  strong  side-light  on  the 
tactics  of  the  anti-slavery  leaders.  They 
were  following  Garrison.  Garrison,  the 

1  "  History  of  United  States,"  Rhodes,  vol.  I. 

2  Channing. 

152 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

father  of  the  Abolitionists,  had  begun  his 
campaign  against  slave-holders  by  "ex 
hausting  upon  them  the  vocabulary  of 
abuse/'  and  he  had  shown  "a  genius  for 
infuriating  his  antagonists."  The  new 
party — his  successor  and  beneficiary,  was 
now  felicitating  itself  that  ultimate  good 
would  come,  even  from  the  John  Brown 
raid.  It  would  further  their  policy  of 
"driving  the  slave  power  to  new  outrages" 

People  at  the  North,  conservatives  and 
all,  held  their  breath  for  a  time  after  Har 
per's  Ferry.  Then  the  crusade  went  on,  in 
the  press,  on  the  rostrum,  and  from  the 
pulpit,  with  as  much  virulence  as  ever.  No 
assertion  was  too  extravagant  for  belief, 
provided  only  its  tendency  was  to  disparage 
the  Southern  white  man  or  win  sympathy 
for  the  negro.  From  the  noted  "Brown- 
low  and  Pryne's  Debate,"  Philadelphia 
(Lippincott),  we  take  the  following  as  a 
specimen  of  the  abuse  a  portion  of  the 
Northern  press  was  then  heaping  on  the 
Southern  people.  Brownlow  quotes  from  the 
New  York  Independent  of  November,  1856: 

"The  mass  of  the  population  of  the  At- 

'Hart. 
153 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

lantic  Coast  of  the  slave  region  of  the  South 
are  descended  from  the  transported  con 
victs  and  outcasts  of  Great  Britain.  .  .  . 
Oh,  glorious  chivalry  and  hereditary  aris 
tocracy  of  the  South!  Peerless  first  families 
of  Virginia  and  Carolina !  .  .  .  Progeny  of 
the  highwaymen,  and  horse-thieves  and 
sheep-stealers,  and  pick-pockets  of  Old 
England!'' 

The  South  was  not  to  be  outdone,  and 
here  was  a  retort  from  De  Bow's  Review, 
July,  1858: 

"The  basis,  framework,  and  controlling 
influence  of  Northern  sentiment  is  Puri 
tanism — the  old  Roundhead,  rebel  refuse  of 
England,  which  .  .  .  has  ever  been  an  un 
ruly  sect  of  Pharisees  .  .  .  the  worst  bigots 
on  earth  and  the  meanest  of  tyrants  when 
they  have  the  power  to  exercise  it."1 

And  the  non-slave-holder  of  the  South 
did  not  escape  from  the  pitiless  pelting  of 
the  storm.  He  was  sustaining  the  slave 
holder,  and  this  was  not  only  an  offence 
but  a  puzzle. 

It  became  quite  common  in  the  North  for 
anti-slavery  writers  to  classify  the  non-slave- 

1  Theodore  Clarke  Smith,  "Parties  and  Slavery,"  p.  303. 
154 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

holding  agricultural  classes  of  the  South  as 
"poor  whites/'  thus  distinguishing  them 
from  the  slave-holders;  and  the  idea  is  cur 
rent  even  now  in  that  section  that  as  a  class 
the  lordly  slave-holder  despised  his  poor 
white  fellow-citizen.  The  average  non- 
slave-holding  Southern  agriculturist,  whether 
farming  for  himself  or  for  others,  was  a  type 
of  man  that  no  one  who  knew  him,  least  of 
all  the  Southern  slave-holder,  his  neighbor 
and  political  ally,  could  despise.  Educated 
and  uneducated,  these  people  were  inde 
pendent  voters  and  honest  jurors,  the  very 
backbone  of  Southern  State  governments 
that  always  will  be  notable  in  history  for 
efficiency,  purity,  and  economy. 

This  class  of  voters,  however,  came  in  for 
much  abuse  in  the  literature  of  the  crusade. 
They  were  all  lumped  together  as  "poor 
whites,"  sometimes  as  "poor  white  trash," 
and  the  belief  was  inculcated  that  their  im 
perious  slave-holding  neighbors  applied  that 
term  to  them.  "  Poor  white  trash,"  on  its 
face,  is  "nigger  talk,"  caught  up,  doubtless, 
from  Southern  negro  barbers  and  bootblacks, 
and  used  by  writers  who,  from  information 
thus  derived,  pictured  Southern  society. 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

This  is  a  sample  of  the  numerous  errors 
that  crept  into  the  literature  of  one  section 
of  our  Union  about  social  conditions  in  the 
other  during  that  memorable  sectional  con 
troversy.  It  is  on  a  par  with  the  idea  that 
prevailed,  in  some  quarters  in  the  South, 
that  the  Yankee  cared  for  nothing  but 
money,  and  would  not  fight  even  for  that. 

Southerners  were  practically  all  of  the  old 
British  stock.  Homogeneity,  common  mem 
ories  of  the  wars  of  the  Revolution,  of  1812, 
and  with  Mexico,  and  Fourth  of  July  cele 
brations,  all  tended  to  bind  together  strong 
ly  the  Southern  slave-holder  and  non-slave 
holder. 

There  were,  of  course,  many  classes  of 
non-slave-holders — the  thrifty  farmer,  the 
unthrifty,  and  the  laborer  who  worked  for 
hire,  but  more  frequently  for  "shares  of  the 
crop."  Then  there  were  others — the  inhabi 
tants  of  the  "sand-hills"  and  the  mountain 
regions.  These  people  were,  as  a  rule,  very 
shiftless;  too  lazy  to  work,  they  were  still 
too  proud  to  beg,  as  the  very  poor  usually 
do  in  other  countries.  The  mountaineers 
were  hardier  than  the  sand-hillers,  and  it 
was  from  the  mountains  of  Tennessee,  Ala- 
156 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

bama,  etc.,  that  the  Union  armies  gathered 
many  recruits.  This  was  not,  as  is  often 
stated,  because  mountaineers  love  liberty 
better  than  others,  but  because  these  moun 
taineers  never  came  into  contact  with  either 
master  or  slave.  The  crusade  against  slav 
ery,  therefore,  did  not  threaten  to  affect 
their  personal  status. 

There  were  very  few  public  schools  in  the 
South,  but  in  the  cities  and  towns  there  were 
academies  and  high-schools,  and  the  country 
was  dotted  with  "old  field  schools,"  most  of 
them  not  good,  but  sufficient  to  train  those 
who  became  efficient  leaders  in  social,  re 
ligious,  and  political  circles. 

The  wonderful  progress  made  by  the 
Southern  white  man  during  the  last  thirty- 
five  years  is  by  no  means  all  due  to  the  abo 
lition  of  slavery.  Labor,  it  is  true,  is  held 
in  higher  esteem.  This  is  a  great  gain,  but 
still  more  is  due  to  improved  transporta 
tion,  to  better  prices  for  timber  and  cotton, 
to  commercial  fertilizers,  and  an  awakening 
interest  in  education.  The  South  is  also 
developing  its  mineral  resources  and  is  now 
rapidly  forging  to  the  front.  The  white 
man  is  making  more  cotton  than  the  negro. 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

But  the  very  strongest  bond  that  bound 
together  the  Southern  slave-holder  and  non- 
slave-holder  was  the  pride  of  caste.  Every 
white  man  was  a  freeman;  he  belonged  to 
the  superior,  the  dominant  race. 

Edmund  Burke,  England's  philosopher- 
statesman,  in  his  speech  on  "Conciliation 
with  America"  at  the  beginning  of  our  Rev 
olution,  complimented  in  high  terms  the 
spirit  of  liberty  among  the  dissenting  pro- 
testants  of  New  England.  Then,  alluding  to 
the  hopes  indulged  in  by  some  gentlemen, 
that  the  Southern  colonies  would  be  loyal 
to  Great  Britain  because  the  Church  of 
England  had  there  a  large  establishment, 
he  said:  "It  is  certainly  true.  There  is, 
however,  a  circumstance  attending  these 
colonies  which  in  my  opinion  fully  counter 
balances  this  difference,  and  makes  the 
spirit  of  liberty  still  more  high  and  haughty 
than  in  those  to  the  Northward.  It  is,  that 
in  Virginia  and  Carolina  they  have  a  vast 
multitude  of  slaves.  Where  this  is  the  case, 
in  any  part  of  the  world,  those  who  are  free 
are  by  far  the  most  proud  and  jealous  of  their 
freedom.  Freedom  with  them  is  not  only  an 
enjoyment,  but  a  kind  of  rank  and  privilege." 
158 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

The  privilege  of  belonging  to  the  superior 
race  and  of  being  free  was  a  bond  that  tied 
all  Southern  whites  together,  and  it  was 
infinitely  strengthened  by  a  crusade  that 
seemed,  from  a  Southern  stand-point,  to 
have  for  its  purpose  the  levelling  of  all  dis 
tinctions  between  the  white  man  and  the 
slave  hard  by. 

Socially,  there  were  classes  in  the  South 
as  there  are  everywhere.  The  controlling 
class  consisted  of  professional  men,  lawyers, 
physicians,  teachers,  and  high-class  mer 
chants  (though  the  merchant  prince  was 
unknown),  and  slave-holders.  Slave-holders 
were,  of  course,  divided  into  classes,  chiefly 
two:  those  who  had  acquired  culture  and 
breeding  from  slave-holding  ancestors,  and 
those  who  had  little  culture  or  breeding, 
principally  the  newly  rich.  It  was  the 
former  class  that  gave  tone  to  Southern 
society.  The  performance  of  duty  always 
ennobles,  and  this  is  especially  true  of  duty 
done  by  superiors  to  inferiors.  The  master 
and  mistress  of  a  slave  establishment  were 
responsible  for  the  moral  and  material  wel 
fare  of  their  dependents.  When  they  appre 
ciated  and  fulfilled  their  responsibilities,  as 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  best  families  usually  did,  there  was  found 
what  was  called  the  Southern  aristocracy. 
The  habit  of  command,  assured  position,  and 
high  ideals,  coming  down,  as  these  often  did, 
with  family  traditions,  gave  these  favored 
people  ease  and  grace,  and  they  were  social 
favorites,  both  in  the  North  and  Europe. 
At  home  they  dispensed  a  hospitality  that 
made  the  South  famous.  They  were  ex 
emplars,  giving  tone  to  society,  and  it  was 
notable  that  breeding  and  culture,  and  not 
wealth,  gave  tone  to  Southern  society. 
There  was  perhaps  in  Virginia  and  South 
Carolina  an  aristocracy  that  was  somewhat 
more  exclusive  than  elsewhere. 

Slavery  was  at  its  worst  when  masters 
were  not  equal  to  their  responsibilities,  for 
want  of  either  culture  or  Christian  feeling, 
or  both,  as  also  when,  as  was  now  and  then 
the  case,  a  brutal  overseer  was  in  charge  of 
a  plantation  far  away  from  the  eye  of  the 
owner. 

The  influence  of  the  slave-holder  and  his 
lavish  hospitality  did  not  make  for  thrift 
among  his  less  fortunate  brethren;  it  made 
perhaps  for  prodigality,  but  it  also  made  for 
a  high  sense  of  honor  among  slave-holders 
1 60 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

and  non-slave-holders  as  well.  Both  slave 
holders  and  non-slave-holders  were  ex 
tremely  punctilious.  Money  did  not  count 
where  honor  was  concerned,  and  Southern 
ers  do  well  to  be  proud  of  the  record  in  this 
respect  that  has  been  made  by  their  states 
men. 

Among  the  more  cultured  classes  in  the 
period  here  treated  of,  the  duel  prevailed,  a 
practice  now  very  properly  condemned.  But 
it  made  for  a  high  sense  of  honor.  Dema 
gogues  were  not  common  when  a  false  state 
ment  on  "the  stump"  was  apt  to  result  in 
a  mortal  combat. 

Among  the  less  cultured  classes  insult 
was  answered  with  a  blow  of  the  fist.  Fisti 
cuffs,  too,  were  quite  common  to  ascertain 
who  was  the  "best  man"  in  a  community 
or  county.  The  rules  were  not  according  to 
the  Marquis  of  Queensbury,  but  they  al 
ways  secured  "fair  play."1 

This  combative  spirit  of  Southerners  was 
undoubtedly  a  result  of  the  spirit  of  caste 
that  came  from  slavery.  Sometimes  it  was 

1  For  the  humorous  side  of  life  in  the  South  in  the  old  day, 
see  "Simon  Suggs,"  J.  J.  Hooper;  "Georgia  Scenes,"  Judge 
Longstreet,  and  "Flush  Times  of  Alabama  and  Mississippi,"  by 
Baldwin. 

161 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

unduly  exhibited  in  Congress  during  the 
controversy  over  slavery  and  State's  rights, 
and  excited  Southerners  occasionally  sub 
jected  themselves  to  the  charge  of  arrogance. 

One  of  the  great  evils  of  slavery  was  that, 
as  a  rule,  neither  the  slave-holder  nor  the 
non-slave-holder  properly  appreciated  the 
dignity  of  labor.  A  witty  student  at  a 
Southern  university  said  that  his  chief  ob 
jection  to  college  life  was  that  he  could  not 
have  a  negro  to  learn  his  lessons  for  him. 
The  slave-holder  quite  generally  disdained 
manual  labor,  and  the  non-slave-holder  was 
also  inclined  to  deprecate  the  necessity  that 
compelled  him  to  work. 

The  sudden  abolition  of  slavery  was  the 
ruin  of  thousands  of  innocent  families — a 
loss  for  which  there  was  no  recompense. 
But  for  the  South  at  large,  and  especially 
to  this  generation,  it  is  a  blessing  that  all 
classes  have  come  to  see,  that  to  labor  and 
to  be  useful  is  not  only  a  duty,  but  a  privi 
lege. 

Political  conditions,  North  and  South, 
differed  widely.  The  North  was  the  major 
ity  section.  Its  majority  could  protect  its 
rights;  recourse  to  the  limitations  of  the 
162 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Federal  Constitution  was  seldom  necessary. 
The  South,  a  minority  section,  with  a  devo 
tion  that  never  failed,  held  high  the  "Con 
stitution  of  the  fathers,  the  palladium "  of 
its  rights.  To  one  section  the  Constitution 
was  the  bond  of  a  Federal  Union  that  was 
the  security  for  interstate  commerce  and 
national  prosperity;  to  the  other  it  was  a 
guaranty  of  peace  abroad  and  local  self- 
government  at  home.  In  the  one  section 
the  brightest  minds  were  for  the  most  part 
engaged  in  business  or  in  literary  pursuits; 
in  the  other,  politics  absorbed  much  of  its 
talent.  In  the  North  the  staple  of  political 
discussion  was  usually  some  business  or 
moral  question,  while  in  the  South  the  po 
litical  arena  was  a  great  school  in  which  the 
masses  were  not  only  educated  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  formation  of  the  Constitution, 
but  taught  an  affectionate  regard  for  that 
instrument  as  a  revered  "gift  from  the 
fathers"  and  the  only  safeguard  of  American 
liberty.  Joint  political  discussions,  which 
were  common  between  the  ablest  men  of 
opposing  parties,  were  always  numerously 
attended,  and  the  Federal  Constitution  was 
an  unfailing  topic.  The  result  was,  an 
163 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

amount  of  political  information  in  the  aver 
age  Confederate  soldier  that  the  average 
Union  soldier  in  his  business  training  had 
never  acquired,  and  a  devotion  of  the  South 
erner  to  the  Constitution  of  his  country 
which  even  the  ablest  historians  of  to-day 
have  failed  to  comprehend. 

It  is  often  stated,  as  if  it  were  an  important 
fact  in  the  consideration  of  the  great  anti- 
slavery  crusade,  that  not  many  of  the  Abo 
litionists  were  as  radical  as  Garrison,  and 
that  of  the  anti-slavery  voters  very  few 
favored  social  equality  between  whites  and 
blacks.  Southerners  did  not  stop  to  make 
distinctions  like  these.  They  saw  the  Aboli 
tionists  advocating  mixed  schools  and  favor 
ing  laws  authorizing  mixed  marriages;  saw 
them  practising  social  equality;  saw  the 
general  trend  in  that  direction ;  and  so  from 
its  very  beginning  the  Republican  party, 
which  had  absorbed  the  Abolitionists,  was 
dubbed,  North  and  South,  the  "Black  Re 
publican"  party. 

The  whites  of  the  South  believed  that  the 

triumph  of  the  "Black  Republican"  party, 

as  they  called  it,  would  be  ultimately  the 

triumph  of  its  most  radical  elements.    Judge 

164 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Reagan,  of  Texas,  United  States  congress 
man  in  1 860-61,  Confederate  Postmaster- 
General,  later  United  States  senator,  and 
always  until  1860  an  avowed  friend  of  the 
Union,  in  his  farewell  speech  to  the  Con 
gress  of  the  United  States  in  January,  1861, 
gave  expression  to  this  idea  when  he  said: 

"And  now  you  tender  to  us  the  inhuman 
alternative  of  unconditional  submission  to 
Republican  rule  on  abolition  principles,  and 
ultimately  to  free  negro  equality,  and  a  govern 
ment  of  mongrels,  or  a  war  of  races  on  the 
one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  secession  and  a 
bloody  and  desolating  civil  war." 

Judge  Reagan  was  expressing  in  Congress 
the  opinion  that  animated  the  Confederate 
soldier  in  the  war  that  was  to  follow  seces 
sion,  an  opinion  the  ex-Confederate  did  not 
see  much  reason  to  change  when  the  era  of 
Reconstruction  had  been  reached,  and  the 
ballot  had  been  given  to  every  negro,  while 
the  leading  whites  were  disfranchised. 

In  1857  Hinton  Rowan  Helper,  of  North 
Carolina,  wrote  a  notable  book  to  show  that 
slavery  was  a  curse  to  the  South,  and  espe 
cially  to  the  non-slave-holders.  It  was  an 

1  "Memoirs  of  John  H.  Reagan,"  p.  261. 

165 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

appeal  to  the  latter  to  become  Abolition 
ists.  His  arguments  availed  nothing;  back 
of  his  book  was  the  Republican  party, 
now  planting  itself,  as  Garrison  had  planted 
himself,  on  an  extract  from  the  first  sentence 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  "all 
men  are  created  equal."  The  Republican 
contention  was,  in  platforms  and  speeches, 
that  the  Declaration  of  Independence  cov 
ered  negroes  as  well  as  whites,1  and  South 
ern  whites,  nearly  all  of  Revolutionary  stock, 
resented  the  idea.  They  rebelled  at  the  sug 
gestion  that  the  signers,  every  one  of  whom, 
save  possibly  those  from  Massachusetts, 
represented  slave-holding  constituents,  in 
tended  to  say  that  the  negroes  then  in  the 
colonies  were  the  equals  of  the  whites.  If 
so,  why  were  these  negroes  kept  in  slavery, 
and  why  were  they  not  immediately  given 
the  right  to  vote,  to  sit  on  juries,  to  be  edu 
cated,  and  to  intermarry  with  the  whites? 
All  this,  the  Southerners  said,  as,  indeed, 
did  many  Northerners  also,  was  to  be  the 
logical  outcome  of  the  Republican  doctrine, 
that  negroes  and  whites  were  equals.  It  is 

1  Mr.  Lincoln  took  that  position  in  his  great  speech  at  Chicago, 
in  1858,  when  beginning  his  campaign  for  the  senatorship. 

1 66 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

passing  strange  that  modern  historians  so 
often  have  failed  to  note  that  this  thought 
was  in  the  minds  of  all  the  opponents  of  the 
Republican  party  from  the  day  of  its  birth- 
North  and  South  it  was  called  the  "  Black 
Republican"  party.  Douglas,  in  his  de 
bate  with  Lincoln,  gave  it  that  name  and 
stood  by  it.  In  his  speech  at  Jonesboro, 
Illinois,  September  15,  1858,  he  charges 
the  Republicans  with  advocating  "negro 
citizenship  and  negro  equality,  putting  the 
white  man  and  the  negro  on  the  same  basis 
under  the  law."  * 

John  C.  Calhoun,  in  a  memorial  to  the 
Southern  people  in  1849,  signed  by  many 
other  congressmen,  had  said  that  Northern 
fanaticism  would  not  stop  at  emancipation. 
"Another  step  would  be  taken  to  raise  them 
[the  negroes]  to  a  political  and  social  equality 
with  their  former  owners,  by  giving  them 
the  right  of  voting  and  holding  public  office 
under  the  Federal  Government.  .  .  .  But 
when  raised  to  an  equality  they  would 
become  the  fast  political  associates  of  the 
North,  acting  and  voting  with  them  on  all 
questions,  and  by  this  perfect  union  be- 

1  Lincoln,  "Complete  Works,"  vol.  IV,  p.  9. 

167 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

tween  them  holding  the  South  in  complete 
subjection.  The  blacks  and  the  profligate 
whites  that  might  unite  with  them  would  be 
come  the  principal  recipients  of  Federal 
patronage,  and  would,  in  consequence,  be 
raised  above  the  whites  of  the  South  in  the 
social  and  political  scale.  We  would,  in  a 
word,  change  conditions  with  them,  a  deg 
radation  greater  than  has  as  yet  fallen  to  the 
lot  of  a  free  and  enlightened  people'9 1 

In  the  light  of  Reconstruction,  this  was 
prophecy. 

These  words,  once  heard  by  a  Southern 
white  man,  of  course  sank  into  his  heart. 
They  could  never  have  been  forgotten.  The 
argument  of  Helper  fell  on  deaf  ears.  If 
Helper  had  come  with  the  promise  (and  an 
assurance  of  its  fulfilment)  that  the  negroes, 
when  emancipated,  would  be  sent  to  Liberia, 
or  elsewhere  out  of  the  country,  the  South 
would  have  become  Republicanized  at  once. 
Even  if  the  slave-holder  had  been  unwill 
ing,  the  Southern  non-slave-holder,  with  his 
three,  and  often  five,  to  one  majority,  would 
have  seen  to  it. 

And  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  if  the 

1  "Calhoun's  Works,"  vol.  VI,  p.  311. 
1 68 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

negro  had  been,  as  the  Abolitionists  and 
ultimately  many  Republicans  contended  he 
was,  the  equal  of  the  white  man,  Liberia 
would  have  been  a  success.  What  a  glorious 
consummation  of  the  dreams  of  statesmen 
and  philanthropists  that  would  have  been! 
Abolitionists,  unable  to  frustrate  their 
scheme,  and  the  American  negro,  profiting 
by  the  civilization  here  received  from  con 
tact  with  the  white  man,  building  by  his 
own  energy  happy  homes  for  himself  and 
his  kinsmen,  and  enjoying  the  blessings  of 
a  great  government  of  his  own,  in  his  own 
great  continent! 

Africa  with  its  vast  resources  is  a  prize 
that  all  Europe  is  now  contending  for.  It 
is  believed  to  be  adapted  even  to  white  men. 
Most  assuredly,  for  the  negro  Liberia  offered 
far  better  opportunities  than  did  the  rocky 
coast  of  New  England  to  the  white  men  who 
settled  it.  Liberia  had  been  carefully  se 
lected  as  a  desirable  part  of  Africa.  It  was 
an  unequalled  group  of  statesmen  and  phi 
lanthropists  that  had  planted  the  colony; 
they  provided  for  it  and  set  it  on  its  feet. 
But  it  failed;  failed  just  for  the  same  rea 
son  that  prevented  the  aboriginal  African 
169 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

from  catching  on  to  the  civilization  that  be 
gan  to  develop  thousands  of  years  ago,  close 
by  his  side  on  the  borders  of  the  Mediter 
ranean;  failed  for  the  same  reason  that 
Hayti,  now  free  for  a  century,  has  failed. 
The  failure  of  the  plan  of  the  American  Col 
onization  Society  to  repatriate  the  American 
negro  in  Africa  was  due  primarily  to  the  in 
capacity  of  the  negro. 

A  very  complete  and  convincing  story 
will  be  found  in  an  article  entitled  "Liberia, 
an  Example  of  Negro  Self-Government,"1 
by  Miss  Agnes  P.  Mahony,  for  five  years  a 
missionary  in  that  country.  The  author  of 
the  article  was  a  sympathizing  friend.  She 
says:  "In  1847  the  colony  was  considered 
healthy  enough  to  stand  alone.  ...  So  our 
flag  was  lowered  on  the  African  continent, 
and  the  protectors  of  the  colony  retired, 
leaving  the  people  to  govern  the  country 
in  their  own  way."  Then  she  recites  that 
in  order  to  test  their  capacity  for  self-gov 
ernment  their  constitution  (1847)  provided 
that  no  white  man  should  hold  property 
in  the  country;  and  to  this  Miss  Mahony 
traces  the  failure  that  followed.  When  she 

1  Independent,  1906. 
170 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

wrote,  the  Liberian  negroes,  for  fifty-nine 
years  under  the  protectorship  of  the  United 
States,  had  been  troubled  by  no  foreign 
enemy;  yet  their  failure  was  complete — 
not  a  foot  of  railroad,  no  cable  communi 
cation  with  foreign  countries,  no  telegraphic 
communication  with  the  interior,  etc.  Still 
the  devoted  missionary  thinks  that  Liberia 
might  prosper,  if  it  could  but  have  "the  en 
couraging  example  of  and  contact  with  the 
right  kind  of  white  men.'9 

The  presidential  campaign  of  1860  was 
very  exciting.  There  were  four  tickets  in 
the  field,  Douglas  and  Johnson,  Democrats; 
Breckenridge  and  Lane,  Democrats;  Lincoln 
and  Hamlin,  Republicans,  and  Bell  and 
Everett  representing  the  "Constitutional 
Union"  party.  As  the  election  approached 
it  became  apparent  that  the  Republicans 
were  leading,  and  far-seeing  men,  like  Sam 
uel  J.  Tilden,  of  New  York,  became  much 
alarmed  for  fear  that  the  election  of  Lincoln 
would  bring  about  secession  in  the  South. 
Mr.  Tilden,  in  view  of  the  danger  that  to  him 
was  apparent,  wrote,  shortly  before  the  elec 
tion,  to  William  Kent,  of  New  York  City, 
171 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

an  open  letter  in  which  he  earnestly  urged 
a  combination  in  New  York  State  of  the 
supporters  of  other  candidates,  in  order  to 
defeat  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  letter  was 
so  alarming  that  some  of  Tilden's  friends 
thought  he  had  lost  his  balance;  but  now 
that  letter  is  regarded  as  a  remarkable  proof 
of  his  sagacity.  In  the  first  volume  of  Mr. 
Tilden's  "Life  and  Letters,"  by  Bigelow, 
appears  an  "Appreciation"  by  James  C. 
Carter  and  an  analysis  of  this  letter.  Of 
this  the  following  is  a  brief  abstract:  Mr. 
Tilden  first  argued  that  two  strictly  sec 
tional  parties,  arrayed  upon  the  question  of 
destroying  an  institution  which  one  of  them, 
not  unnaturally,  regarded  as  essential  to 
self-existence,  would  bring  war. 

Then  Mr.  Tilden  further  said  that  if  the 
Republican  party  should  be  successful  in 
establishing  its  dominion  over  the  South, 
the  national  government  in  the  Southern 
States  would  cease  to  be  self-government 
and  become  a  government  of  one  people 
over  a  distinct  people,  a  thing  impossible 
with  our  race,  except  as  a  consequence  of  a 
successful  war,  and  even  then  incompatible 
with  our  democratic  institutions.  He  also 
172 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

said:  "I  assert  that  a  controversy  between 
powerful  communities,  organized  into  gov 
ernments,  of  a  nature  like  that  which  now 
divides  the  North  and  South,  can  be  settled 
only  by  convention  or  by  war." 

And  again:  "A  condition  of  parties  in 
which  the  Federative  Government  shall  be 
carried  on  by  a  party,  having  no  affiliations 
in  the  Southern  States,  is  impossible  to  con 
tinue.  Such  a  government  would  be  out  of 
all  relations  to  those  States.  It  would  have 
neither  the  nerves  of  sensation,  which  con 
vey  intelligence  to  the  intellect  of  the  body 
politic,  nor  the  ligaments  and  muscles, 
which  hold  its  parts  together  and  move  them 
in  harmony.  It  would  be  in  substance  the 
government  of  one  people  by  another  peo 
ple.  That  system  will  not  do  for  our  race." 

Mr.  Tilden,  when  he  spoke  of  "two  sec 
tional  parties  arrayed  upon  the  question  of 
destroying  an  institution,"  viz.,  slavery,  saw 
the  situation  exactly  as  the  South  did.  To 
prove  that  the  Republican  party  was  look 
ing  to  the  ultimate  destruction  of  the  insti 
tution,  Mr.  Tilden  cited  the  leadership  of 
Chase  and  his  speeches  in  which  he  was  pro 
pounding  the  higher  law  theory;  asserting 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

that  the  conflict  was  "irrepressible";  sug 
gesting  the  power  of  the  North  to  amend 
the  Constitution,  etc. 

The  South  noted  this,  and  it  regarded,  not 
the  platform,  but  the  record  of  the  Repub 
lican  party  and  of  the  statesmen  the  party 
was  following. 

Long  before  1860,  that  great  American 
scholar,  George  Ticknor,  saw  the  dilemma 
in  which  the  North  was  involving  itself 
by  its  concern  over  slavery  in  the  South, 
and  he  thus  stated  it,  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend,  William  Ellery  Channing,  April  30, 
1842 i1 

"On  the  subject  of  our  relations  with 
the  South  and  its  slavery,  we  must — as  I 
have  always  thought — do  one  of  two  things  ; 
either  keep  honestly  the  bargain  of  the  Con 
stitution  as  it  shall  be  interpreted  by  the 
authorities — of  which  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  is  the  chief  and  safest— 
or  declare  honestly  that  we  can  no  longer 
in  our  conscience  consent  to  keep  it,  and 
break  it." 

The  North  had  failed  to  "keep  honestly 
the  bargain  of  the  Constitution"  by  faith- 

1  Life  and  Letters  and  Journals  of  George  Ticknor. 
174 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

fully  delivering  fugitive  slaves  and  leaving 
the  question  of  slavery  to  be  dealt  with  by 
the  States  in  which  it  existed,  and  was 
now,  in  1860,  upon  the  other  horn  of  the 
dilemma — repudiating  and  denouncing  a  de 
cision  of  the  Supreme  Court,  which,  as  Mr. 
Ticknor  had  said,  was  the  "chief  and  safest 
authority."  But  during  that  campaign  of 
1860  very  many,  perhaps  a  majority  of  the 
Republican  voters,  failed  to  realize  what 
their  party  was  standing  for.  Indeed,  down 
to  this  day  the  members  of  that  organiza 
tion,  taught  as  they  have  been,  indignantly 
deny  that  a  vote  for  Lincoln  and  Hamlin  in 
1860  looked  to  an  interference  with  slavery 
in  the  States. 

But  now  Professor  Emerson  David  Fite, 
of  Yale  University,  sees  in  1911  what  was 
the  underlying  hope,  and  consequently  the 
ultimate  aim,  of  the  Republican  party  in 
1860,  exactly  as  the  South  saw  it  then.  In 
a  powerful  summing  up  of  more  evidence 
than  there  is  room  to  recite  here,  he  says: 
"The  testimony  of  the  Democracy  and  of 
the  leaders  of  the  Republican  party  accords 
well  with  the  evidence  of  daily  events  in 
revealing  Republican  aggression.  The  party 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

hoped  to  destroy  slavery,  and  this  was  some 
thing  new  in  a  large  -political  organization." 

That  this  party,  when  it  should  ultimately 
come  into  full  power,  would,  to  carry  out 
the  purpose  which  Professor  Fite  now  sees, 
ignore  the  Federal  Constitution  was,  in 
1860,  evident  to  Southerners  from  the  fol 
lowing  facts: 

In  1841  the  governor  of  Virginia  de 
manded  of  the  governor  of  New  York  the 
extradition  of  two  men  indicted  in  Virginia 
for  enticing  away  slaves  from  their  mas 
ters.  Governor  Seward,  of  New  York,  re 
fused  the  demand,  on  the  ground  that  no 
such  offence  existed  in  New  York.  This 
case  did  not  go  to  the  courts,  but  in  1860 
the  governor  of  Kentucky  made  a  similar 
demand  in  a  like  case  on  the  governor  of 
Ohio,  who  placed  his  refusal  on  the  same 
grounds  as  had  Governor  Seward  in  the 
former  case.  The  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  in  this  case  decided  that  the 
governor  of  Ohio,  in  refusing  to  deliver  up 
the  fugitive,  was  violating  the  Constitution. 
The  court  further  said : 

"If  the  governor  of  Ohio  refuses  to  dis- 

1  "The  Presidential  Campaign  of  1860,"  p.  195,  Fite,  1911. 

176 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

charge  this  duty  there  is  no  power  delegated  to 
the  general  government,  either  through  the  ju 
dicial  department  or  any  other  department, 
to  use  any  coercive  means  to  compel  him."  1 

If  these  two  governors  had  defied  the 
Federal  Constitution,  so  had  eleven  State 
legislatures.  From  1854  to  1860,  inclu 
sive,  Vermont,  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut, 
Maine,  Massachusetts,  Michigan,  Wiscon 
sin,  Kansas,  Ohio,  and  Pennsylvania,  had 
all  passed  new  "personal  liberty  laws"  to 
abrogate  the  new  fugitive  slave  law  of  1850. 

Of  these  laws  Professor  Alexander  John 
ston  said: 

"There  is  absolutely  no  excuse  for  the 
personal  liberty  laws.  If  the  rendition  of 
fugitive  slaves  was  a  federal  obligation,  the 
personal  liberty  laws  were  flat  disobedience 
to  the  law;  if  the  obligation  was  upon  the 
States,  they  were  a  gross  breach  of  good 
faith,  for  they  were  intended  and  operated 
to  prevent  rendition;  and,  in  either  case, 
they  were  in  violation  of  the  Constitution."  2 

And  now  came  the  State  of  Wisconsin. 
Its  Supreme  Court  intervened  and  took  from 

"Virginia's  Attitude   on   Slavery  and  Secession,"  Mumford, 

pp.  211-12. 

2  Alexander  Johnston,  "Lalor's  Encyclopaedia,"  vol.  Ill,  p.  163. 
177 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  hands  of  the  federal  authorities  an  al 
leged  fugitive  slave.  The  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  reversed  the  case  and  or 
dered  the  slave  back  into  the  custody  of  the 
United  States  marshal;1  and  thereupon  the 
General  Assembly  of  Wisconsin  expressly  re 
pudiated  the  authority 'of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court.  The  Wisconsin  assembly 
asserted  its  right  to  nullify  the  Federal  law, 
basing  its  action  on  the  Kentucky  Resolu 
tions  of  1798 — a  recrudescence  of  a  doctrine 
long  since  abandoned  even  in  the  South. 

In  reality  all  this  defiance  of  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States  by  State  execu 
tives,  State  legislatures,  and  a  State  court, 
was  on  the  ground  that  whatever  was  dic 
tated  by  conscience  to  these  officials  was  a 
"higher  law  than  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States";  and  modern  historians 
recognize,  as  Tilden  did,  the  leadership  of 
the  statesman  who  in  1850  announced  that 
startling  doctrine.  It  is  Alexander  Johnston 
who  says,  "Seward's  speeches  in  the  Senate 
made  him  the  leader  of  the  Republican 
party  from  its  first  organization." 

1  Ableman  v.  Booth,  21  How. 

2  Alexander  Johnston,   "Lalor's  Encyclopaedia,"   vol.   Ill,   p. 
707. 

I78 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

To  the  minds  of  Southerners  it  seemed 
clear  that  if  the  Southern  States  desired  to 
preserve  for  themselves  the  Constitution  of  the 
fathers,  they  must  secede  and  set  it  up  over  a 
government  of  their  own.  This  eleven  of 
these  States  did.  Many  of  them  were  re 
luctant  to  take  the  step;  all  their  people 
had  loved  the  old  Union,  but  they  passed 
their  ordinances  of  secession,  united  as  the 
Confederate  States  of  America,  and  their 
officials  took  an  oath  to  maintain  inviolate 
the  old  Constitution,  which,  with  unimpor 
tant  changes  in  it,  they  had  adopted. 

The  new  government  sent  delegates  to 
ask  that  the  separation  should  be  peaceful. 
The  application  was  denied  and  the  war 
followed.  Attempts  to  secede  were  made 
in  Kentucky  and  Missouri.  In  neither  of 
these  States  did  the  seceders  get  full  control. 
They  were  represented,  however,  in  the  Con 
federate  Congress  by  senators  and  represent 
atives  elected  by  the  troops  from  those 
States  that  were  serving  in  the  Confederate 
army. 


CHAPTER  IX 
FOUR  YEARS  OF  WAR 

THE  bitter  fruits  of  anti-slavery  agita 
tion  were  secession  and  four  years 
of  bloody  war.  The  Federal  Government 
wraged  war  to  coerce  the  seceding  States  to 
remain  in  the  Union.  With  the  North  it 
was  a  war  for  the  Union;  the  South  was 
righting  for  independence — denominated  by 
Northern  writers  as  "the  Civil  War."  It 
was  in  reality  a  war  between  the  eleven 
States  which  had  seceded,  as  autonomous 
States,  and  were  fighting  for  independence, 
as  the  Confederate  States  of  America,  against 
the  other  twenty- two  States,  which,  as  the 
United  States  of  America,  fought  against  se 
cession  and  for  the  Union  of  all  the  States. 
It  is  true  the  States  remaining  in  the  Union 
had  with  them  the  army  and  the  navy 
and  the  old  government,  but  that  govern 
ment  could  not,  and  did  not,  exercise  its 
functions  within  the  borders  of  the  seceded 
States  until  by  force  of  arms  in  the  war 
1 80 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

that  was  now  waged  it  had  conquered  a 
control.  It  was  a  war  between  the  States 
for  such  control;  for  independence  on  the 
one  hand,  and  for  the  Union  on  the  other. 
It  was  not,  save  in  exceptional  cases,  a  war 
between  neighbor  and  neighbor;  it  was  a  war 
between  States  as  entities,  and  therefore 
not  properly  a  civil  war.  The  result  of  the 
war  did  not  change  the  principles  upon 
which  it  was  fought,  though  it  did  decide 
finally  the  issues  that  were  involved,  the 
right  of  secession  primarily,  and  slavery  inci 
dentally. 

Jefferson  Davis,  afterward  the  much- 
loved  President  of  the  Confederacy,  in  his 
farewell  speech  in  the  United  States  Senate, 
March  21,  1861,  thus  stated  the  case  of  the 
South:  "Then,  senators,  we  recur  to  the 
compact  which  binds  us  together.  We  re 
cur  to  the  principles  upon  which  this  gov 
ernment  was  founded,  and  when  you  deny 
them,  and  when  you  deny  to  us  the  right 
to  withdraw  from  a  Union  which  thus  per 
verted  threatens  to  be  destructive  of  our  rights, 
we  but  tread  in  the  path  of  our  fathers  when 
we  proclaim  our  independence  and  take  the 
hazard.  This  is  done  not  in  hostility  to 
181 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

others,  not  to  injure  any  section  of  our  coun 
try,  not  even  for  our  own  pecuniary  benefit, 
but  from  the  high  and  solemn  motive  of  defend 
ing  and  protecting  the  rights  we  inherited  and 
which  it  is  our  duty  to  transmit  unshorn  to  our 
children" 

Southerners  were,  as  Mr.  Davis  under 
stood  it,  treading  in  the  path  of  their  fathers 
when  they  proclaimed  their  independence 
and  fought  for  the  right  of  self-government. 

Professor  Fite,  of  Yale,  justifies  secession 
on  the  following  ground : 

"In  the  last  analysis  the  one  complete 
justification  of  secession  was  the  necessity 
of  saving  the  vast  property  of  slavery  from 
destruction;  secession  was  a  commercial 
necessity  designed  to  make  those  billions  se 
cure  from  outside  interference.  Viewed  in 
this  light,  secession  was  right,  for  any  peo 
ple,  prompted  by  the  commonest  motives 
of  self-defence  and  with  no  moral  scruples 
against  slavery,  would  have  followed  the 
same  course.  The  present  generation  of 
Northerners,  born  and  reared  after  the  war, 
must  shake  off  their  inherited  political  pas 
sions  and  prejudices  and  pronounce  the  ver 
dict  of  justification  for  the  South.  Believ- 
182 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

ing  slavery  to  be  right,  it  was  the  duty  of 
the  South  to  defend  it.  It  is  time  that  the 
words  'traitors/  'conspirators/  'rebels/  and 
'rebellion'  be  discarded."1 

These  words  of  Professor  Fite  will  waken 
a  responsive  echo  in  the  hearts  of  Southern 
ers,  but  Southerners  place,  and  their  fathers 
planted,  themselves  on  higher  ground  than 
commercial  considerations.  The  Confeder 
ates  were  defending  their  inherited  right  of 
local  self-government  and  the  Federal  Con 
stitution  that  secured  it.  It  was  for  these 
rights  that,  as  Mr.  Davis  had  said,  they  were 
willing  to  follow  the  path  their  fathers  trod. 

The  preservation  of  the  Union  the  North 
was  fighting  for,  was  a  noble  motive;  it 
looked  to  the  future  greatness  and  glory 
of  the  republic;  but  devotion  to  the  Union 
had  been  a  growth,  the  product  largely  of  a 
single  generation ;  the  devotion  of  the  South 
to  the  right  of  local  self-government  was 
an  older  and  deeper  conviction;  it  had  been 
bred  in  the  bone  for  three  generations;  it 
dated  from  Bunker  Hill  and  Valley  Forge 
and  Yorktown.  Close  as  the  non-slave- 

1  "The  Presidential  Campaign  of  1860,"  Emerson  David  Fite, 
1911,  introductory  chapter. 

183 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

holders  of  the  South  were  to  the  slave 
holders,  of  the  same  British  stock,  and  with 
the  same  traditions,  blood  kinsmen  as  they 
were,  they  might  not  have  been  willing  to 
dare  all  and  do  all  for  the  protection  of  prop 
erty  in  which  they  were  not  interested ;  but 
they  were  ready  to,  and  they  did,  wage  a 
death  struggle  to  maintain  against  a  hostile 
sectional  majority,  their  inherited  right  to 
govern  themselves  in  their  own  way.  Added 
to  this  was  the  ever-present  conviction  of 
Southerners  all,  that  they  were  battling  not 
only  for  the  supremacy  of  their  race  but  for 
the  preservation  of  their  homes.  There  was 
a  little  ditty  quite  prevalent  in  the  Army  of 
Northern  Virginia,  of  which  nothing  is  now 
remembered  except  the  refrain,  but  that  of 
itself  speaks  volumes.  It  ran: 

"Do  you  belong  to  the  rebel  band 
Fighting  for  your  home?" 

Northerners  had,  most  of  them,  convinced 
themselves  that  the  South  would  never 
dare  to  secede.  The  danger  of  servile  insur 
rections,  if  nothing  else,  would  prevent  it.1 

'See  Fite,  "Campaign  of  1860,"  passim,  and  es 
pecially  speech  of  Schurz,  p.  244  et  seq. 

184 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Many  Southerners,  on  the  other  hand,  could 
not  see  how,  under  the  Constitution,  the 
North  could  venture  on  coercion. 

But  to  the  South  the  greatest  surprise  fur 
nished  by  the  events  of  that  era  has  been 
Abraham  Lincoln — as  he  appears  now  in 
the  light  of  history.  What,  in  the  minds  of 
Southerners,  fixed  his  status  personally,  dur 
ing  the  canvass  of  1860,  was  the  statement 
he  had  made  in  his  speech  at  Chicago,  pre 
liminary  to  his  great  debate  with  Douglas  in 
1858,  that  the  Union  could  not  "continue  to 
exist  half  slave  and  half  free."  And  he  was 
now  the  candidate  of  the  "Black  Republi 
can"  party,  a  party  that  was  denouncing  a 
decision  of  the  Supreme  Court;  that,  in 
nearly  every  State  in  the  North,  had  nulli 
fied  the  fugitive  slave  law,  and  that  stood 
for  "negro  equality,"  as  the  South  termed  it. 

There  were  other  statements  by  Mr.  Lin 
coln  in  that  debate  with  Douglas  that  the 
South  has  had  especial  reason  to  take  note 
of  since  the  period  of  Reconstruction.  At 
Springfield,  Illinois,  September  18,  1858,  he 
said:  '' There  is  a  physical  difference  be 
tween  the  white  and  black  races  which,  I 
believe,  will  forever  forbid  the  two  races  liv- 
185 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

ing  together  on  terms  of  social  and  political 
equality,  and,  inasmuch  as  they  can  not  so 
live,  while  they  do  live  together  there  must  be 
the  position  of  superior  and  inferior;  and  7, 
as  much  as  any  other  man,  am  in  favor  0} 
having  that  position  assigned  to  the  white  man." 

The  new  Confederacy  took  the  Constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States,  so  modified  as  to 
make  it  read  plainly  as  Jefferson  had  ex 
pounded  it  in  the  Kentucky  Resolutions  of 
1798.  Other  changes  were  slight.  The  presi 
dential  term  was  extended  to  six  years  and 
the  President  was  not  to  be  re-eligible.  The 
slave  trade  was  prohibited  and  Congress 
was  authorized  to  forbid  the  introduction 
of  slaves  from  the  old  Union. 

Abraham  Lincoln  became  President,  with 
a  fixed  resolve  to  preserve  the  Union  but 
with  no  intent  to  abolish  slavery.  Had  the 
war  for  the  Union  been  as  successful  as  he 
hoped  it  would  be,  slavery  would  not  have 
been  abolished  by  any  act  of  his.  It  is  clear 
that,  when  inaugurated,  he  had  not  changed 
his  opinions  expressed  at  Springfield,  nor 
those  others,  which,  at  Peoria,  Illinois,  on 
October  16,  1854,  he  had  stated  thus: 
"When  our  Southern  brethren  tell  us  they 
186 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

are  no  more  responsible  for  slavery  than  we 
are,  I  acknowledge  the  fact.  When  it  is  said 
the  institution  exists  and  it  is  very  difficult 
to  get  rid  of  it  in  any  satisfactory  way,  I  can 
understand  and  appreciate  the  saying.  I 
will  surely  not  blame  them  for  not  doing 
what'I  should  not  know  how  to  do  myself. 
If  all  earthly  power  were  given  me,  I  should 
not  know  what  to  do  as  to  the  institution. 
My  first  impulse  would  be  to  free  all  the 
slaves  and  send  them  to  Liberia,  their  na 
tive  land." 

This,  he  said,  it  was  impracticable  to  do, 
at  least  suddenly,  and  then  proceeded:  "To 
free  them  all  and  keep  them  among  us  as 
underlings — is  it  quite  certain  that  this 
would  better  their  condition?  .  .  .  What 
next?  Free  them  and  make  them  politically 
and  socially  our  equals?"  This  question  he 
answered  in  the  negative,  and  continued: 
"It  does  seem  to  me  that  systems  of  gradual 
emancipation  might  be  adopted,  but  for 
their  tardiness  I  will  not  undertake  to  judge 
our  brethren  of  the  South." 

In  these  extracts  from  his  speeches  we 
find  a  central  thread  that  runs  through  the 
history  of  his  whole  administration.  We  see 
187 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

it  again  when,  pressed  by  extremists,  Mr. 
Lincoln  said  in  an  open  letter  to  Horace 
Greeley,  August  22,  1862:  "My  paramount 
object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the  Union, 
and  it  is  not  either  to  save  or  to  destroy 
slavery.  If  I  could  save  the  Union  without 
freeing  any  slave  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I 
could  save  it  by  freeing  all  the  slaves  I 
would  do  it;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by  free 
ing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I  would 
also  do  that." 

Indeed,  Congress  had,  in  1861,  by  joint 
resolution  declared  that  the  sole  purpose  of 
the  war  was  the  preservation  of  the  Union. 
In  no  other  way,  and  for  no  other  purpose, 
could  the  North  at  that  time  have  been  in 
duced  to  wage  war  against  the  South. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  and  Jefferson  Davis,  the 
President  of  the  Confederate  States,  were 
both  Kentuckians  by  birth,  both  Americans. 
In  the  purity  of  their  lives,  public  and  pri 
vate,  in  patriotic  devotion  to  the  preserva 
tion  of  American  institutions  as  understood 
by  each  of  them,  they  were  alike;  but  they 
represented  different  phases  of  American 
thought,  and  each  was  the  creature  more  or 
188 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

less  of  his  environment.  Both  were  men  of 
commanding  ability,  but  the  destiny  of  each 
was  shaped  by  agencies  that  now  seem  to 
have  been  directed  by  the  hand  of  Fate. 
Mr.  Lincoln,  by  nature  a  political  genius, 
was  carried  to  Illinois  when  a  child,  reared 
in  the  North-west  among  those  to  whom, 
with  the  Mississippi  River  as  their  only 
outlet  to  the  markets  of  the  world,  disunion, 
with  its  loss  of  their  highway  to  the  sea, 
was  unthinkable.  Lincoln  became  a  Whig, 
with  the  Union  of  the  States  the  passion  of 
his  life,  and  finally,  by  forces  he  had  not 
himself  put  in  motion,  he  was  placed  at  the 
head  of  the  Federal  Government  at  a  time 
when  sectionalism  had  decided  that  the 
question  of  the  permanence  of  the  Union 
was  to  be  tried  out,  once  and  forever. 

Mr.  Davis  went  from  Kentucky  further 
South.  He  was  a  Democrat,  and  environ 
ment  also  moulded  his  opinions.  During 
the  long  sectional  controversy  between  the 
North  and  the  South,  "State-rights"  be 
came  the  passion  of  his  life,  and  when  the 
clash  between  the  sections  came,  he  found 
himself,  without  his  seeking,  at  the  head  of 
the  Confederacy.  He  had  been  prominent 
189 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

among  the  Southerners  at  Washington,  who 
had  hoped  that  the  South,  by  threats  of 
secession,  might  obtain  its  rights  in  the 
Union,  as  had  been  done  in  Jefferson's  days 
by  New  England.  In  the  movement  (1860- 
61)  that  resulted  in  secession,  the  people 
at  home  had  been  ahead  of  their  congress 
men.  William  L.  Yancey,  then  in  Alabama, 
not  Jefferson  Davis  at  Washington,  was 
the  actual  leader  of  the  secessionists.  Mr. 
Davis  feared  a  long  and  bloody  war  and,  un 
like  Yancey,  he  had  doubts  as  to  its  result.1 

Mr.  Lincoln,  standing  for  the  Union,  suc 
ceeded  in  the  war,  but  just  as  he  was  on  the 

1  Mrs.  Chestnut,  wife  of  the  Confederate  general,  James  Chest 
nut,  writes  in  her  "Diary  from  Dixie,'"  under  date  of  1861,  at 
Montgomery,  Alabama,  then  the  Confederate  capital:  "In  Mrs. 
Davis's  drawing-room  last  night,  the  President  took  a  seat  by 
me  on  the  sofa  where  I  sat.  He  talked  for  nearly  an  hour.  He 
laughed  at  our  faith  in  our  own  powers.  We  are  like  the  British. 
We  think  every  Southerner  equal  to  three  Yankees  at  least.  We 
will  have  to  be  equivalent  to  a  dozen  now.  After  his  experience 
of  the  fighting  qualities  of  Southerners  in  Mexico,  he  believes  that 
we  will  do  all  that  can  be  done  by  pluck  and  muscle,  endurance 
and  dogged  courage,  dash,  and  red-hot  patriotism.  And  yet  his 
tone  was  not  sanguine.  There  was  a  sad  refrain  running  through 
it  all.  For  one  thing,  either  way,  he  thinks  it  will  be  a.  long  war. 
That  floored  me  at  once.  It  has  been  too  long  for  me  already. 
Then  he  said,  before  the  end  came  we  would  have  many  bitter 
experiences.  He  said  only  fools  doubted  the  courage  of  the 
Yankees,  or  their  willingness  to  fight  when  they  saw  fit.  And 
now  that  we  have  stung  their  pride,  we  have  roused  them  till  they 
will  fight  like  devils." 

190 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

threshold  of  his  great  work  of  Reconstruc 
tion  he  fell,  the  victim  of  a  crazy  assassin. 
Martyrdom  to  his  cause  has  naturally  added 
some  cubits  to  the  just  measure  of  his  won 
derful  reputation. 

Jefferson  Davis  and  his  cause  failed ;  and 
the  triumphant  forces  that  swept  the  Con 
federacy  out  of  existence  have  long  (and 
quite  naturally)  sought  to  bury  the  cause 
of  the  South  and  its  chosen  leader  in  igno 
miny.  But  the  days  of  hate  and  passion 
are  past;  reason  is  reasserting  her  sway; 
and  history  will  do  justice  to  both  the  Con 
federacy  and  its  great  leader,  whose  ability, 
patriotism,  and  courage  were  conspicuous 
to  the  end. 

Mr.  Davis  was  also  a  martyr — his  long 
imprisonment,  the  manacles  he  wore,  the 
sentinel  gazing  on  him  in  the  bright  light 
that  day  and  night  disturbed  his  rest;  the 
heroism  with  which  he  endured  all  this,  and 
the  quiet  dignity  of  his  after  life — these 
have  doubly  endeared  his  memory  to  those 
for  whose  cause  he  suffered. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  remarkable  political  tact 
—he  seemed  to  know  how  long  to  wait  and 
when  to  act,  and,  if  we  may  credit  Mr. 
191 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

Welles/  his  inflexibly  honest  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  he  was,  with  the  members  of  his 
cabinet,  wonderfully  patient  and  even  long- 
suffering.  And  although  he  was  the  sub 
ject  of  much  abuse,  especially  at  the  hands 
of  Southerners  who  then  totally  misunder 
stood  him,  he  was  animated  always  by  the 
philosophy  of  his  own  famous  words,  "  With 
malice  towards  none,  with  charity  for  all." 
Never  for  one  moment  did  he  forget,  amidst 
even  the  bitterest  of  his  trials,  that  the  Con 
federates,  then  in  arms  against  him,  were, 
as  he  regarded  them,  his  misguided  fellow- 
citizens;  and  the  supreme  purpose  of  his 
life  was  to  bring  them  back  into  the  Union, 
not  as  conquered  foes,  but  as  happy  and 
contented  citizens  of  the  great  republic. 

The  resources  of  the  Confederacy  and  the 
United  States  were  very  unequal.  The  Con 
federacy  had  no  army,  no  navy,  no  factories, 
save  here  and  there  a  flour  mill  or  cotton 
factory,  and  practically  no  machine  shops 
that  could  furnish  engines  for  its  railroads. 
It  had  one  cannon  foundry.  The  Tredegar 
Iron  Works,  at  Richmond,  Virginia,  was  a 
fully  equipped  cannon  foundry.  The  Con- 

"  Diary  of  Gideon  Welles,"  3  vols.,  passim. 
192 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

federacy's  arms  and  munitions  of  war  were 
not  sufficient  to  supply  the  troops  that  vol 
unteered  during  the  first  six  months  of  mili 
tary  operations.  Its  further  supplies,  ex 
cept  such  as  the  Tredegar  works  furnished, 
depended  on  importations  through  the 
blockade  soon  to  be  established  and  such  as 
might  be  captured. 

The  North  had  the  army  and  navy,  fac 
tories  of  every  description,  food  in  abun 
dance,  and  free  access  to  the  ports  of  the 
world. 

The  population  of  the  North  was  22,- 

339,978. 

The  population  of  the  South  was  9,103,- 
332,  of  which  3,653,870  were  colored.  The 
total  white  male  population  of  the  Con 
federacy,  of  all  ages,  was  2,799,818. 

The  reports  of  the  Adjutant-General  of 
the  United  States,  November  9,  1880,  show 
25859,132  men  mustered  into  the  service  of 
the  United  States  in  1861-65.  General  Mar 
cus  J.  Wright,  of  the  United  States  War 
Records  Office,  in  his  latest  estimate  of 
Confederate  enlistments,  places  the  out 
side  number  at  700,000.  The  estimate  of 
Colonel  Henderson,  of  the  staff  of  the  British 
193 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

army,  in  his  "Life  of  Stonewall  Jackson,"  is 
900,000.  Colonel  Thomas  J.  Livermore,  of 
Boston,  estimates  the  number  of  Confeder 
ates  at  about  1,000,000,  and  insists  that  in 
the  Adjutant-General's  reports  of  the  Union 
enlistments  there  are  errors  that  would 
bring  down  the  number  of  Union  soldiers 
to  about  2,000,000.  Colonel  Livermore's 
estimates  are  earnestly  combated  by  Con 
federate  writers. 

General  Charles  Francis  Adams  has,  in  a 
recently  published  volume,1  cited  figures 
given  mostly  by  different  Confederate  au 
thorities,  which  aggregate  1,052,000  Con 
federate  enlistments.  What  authority  these 
Confederate  writers  have  relied  on  is  not 
clear.  The  enlistments  were  for  the  most 
part  directly  in  the  Confederate  army  and 
not  through  State  officials.  The  captured 
Confederate  records  should  furnish  the  high 
est  evidence.  But  it  is  earnestly  insisted 
that  these  records  are  incomplete,  and  there 
is  no  purpose  here  to  discuss  a  disputed 
point. 

The  call  to  arms  was  answered  enthusi- 

1  "Studies,   Military  and   Diplomatic,"   p.   282  et  seq.    These 
studies  make  a  volume  of  rare  historic  value. 

194 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

astically  in  both  sections,  but  the  South 
was  more  united  in  its  convictions,  and 
practically  all  her  young  manhood  fell  into 
line,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  cultured 
and  uncultured  serving  in  the  ranks  side  by 
side. 

The  devotion  of  the  noble  women  of  the 
North,  and  of  its  humanitarian  associations, 
to  the  welfare  of  the  Federal  soldiers  was  re 
markable,  but  there  was  nothing  in  the  sit 
uation  in  that  section  that  could  evoke  such 
a  wonderful  exhibition  of  heroism  and  self- 
sacrifice  as  was  exhibited  by  the  devoted 
women  of  the  South,  who  made  willingly 
every  possible  sacrifice  to  the  cause  of  the 
Confederacy. 

Both  sides  fought  bravely.  Excluding 
from  the  Union  armies  negroes,  foreigners, 
and  the  descendants  of  recent  immigrants, 
the  Confederates  and  the  Union  soldiers  were 
mainly  of  British  stock.  The  Confeder 
ates  had  some  notable  advantages.  Except 
ing  a  few  Union  regiments  from  the  West, 
the  Southerners  were  better  shots  and  better 
horsemen,  especially  in  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  than  the  Northerners;  and  the  South 
erners  were  fighting  not  only  for  the  Consti- 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

tution  of  their  fathers  and  the  defence  of 
their  homes,  but  for  the  supremacy  of  their 
race.  They  had  also  another  military  ad 
vantage,  that  would  probably  have  been  de 
cisive  but  for  the  United  States  navy:  they 
had  interior  lines  of  communication  which 
would  have  enabled  them  to  readily  concen 
trate  their  forces.  But  the  United  States 
navy,  hovering  around  their  coast-line,  not 
only  neutralized  but  turned  this  advantage 
into  a  weakness,  thus  compelling  the  Con 
federates  to  scatter  their  armies.  Every 
port  had  to  be  guarded. 

In  the  West  the  Federals  were  almost 
uniformly  successful  in  the  greater  battles, 
the  Confederates  winning  in  these  but  two 
decisive  victories,  Chickamauga  and  Sabine 
Cross  Roads,  in  Louisiana.  Estimating,  ac 
cording  to  the  method  of  military  experts, 
the  percentage  of  losses  of  the  victor  only, 
Chickamauga  was  the  bloodiest  battle  of  the 
world,  from  and  including  Waterloo  down  to 
the  present  time.  Gettysburg  and  Sharps- 
burg  also  rank  as  high  in  losses  as  any 
battle  fought  elsewhere  in  this  long  period, 
which  takes  in  the  Franco-German  and  the 
Russo-Japanese  wars.  At  Sharpsburg  or 
196 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Antietam  the  losses  exceeded  those  in  any 
other  one  day's  battle.1 

The  Confederates  were  successful,  except 
ing  Antietam  or  Sharpsburg  and  Gettysburg, 
and  perhaps  Seven  Pines  or  Fair  Oaks,  in  all 
the  great  battles  in  the  East,  down  to  the 
time  when  the  shattered  remnant  of  Lee's 
army  was  overwhelmed  at  Petersburg  and 
surrendered  at  Appomattox.  The  elan  the 
Southerners  acquired  in  the  many  victories 
they  won  fighting  for  their  homes  is  not 
to  be  overlooked.  But  the  failure  of  the 
North  with  its  overwhelming  numbers  and 
resources,  to  overcome  the  resistance  of  the 
half-famished  Confederates  until  nearly  four 
years  had  elapsed,  can  only  be  fully  ac 
counted  for,  in  fairness  to  the  undoubted 
courage  of  the  Union  armies,  by  the  fact,  on 
which  foreign  military  critics  are  agreed, 
that  the  North  had  no  such  generals  as  Lee 
and  Stonewall  Jackson.  Only  by  the  supe 
rior  generalship  of  their  leaders  could  the 

1  According  to  that  standard  work,  E.  P.  Alexander's  "Me 
moirs,"  pp.  244,  245,  and  274,  the  Confederates,  who  stood  their 
ground  at  Sharpsburg  on  the  day  of  battle  and  the  day  after,  lost  in 
killed  and  wounded  thirty-two  per  cent.  The  French  army  at 
Waterloo  entirely  dissolved,  with  a  loss  in  killed  and  wounded 
of  only  thirty-one  per  cent.  (See  figures  in  Henderson's  "  Stone 
wall  Jackson."  ) 

197 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

Confederates  have  won  as  many  battles  as 
they  did  against  vastly  superior  numbers. 

But  against  the  United  States  navy  the 
brilliant  generalship  of  the  Confederates  and 
their  marvellous  courage  were  powerless. 

Accepted  histories  of  the  war  have  been 
written  largely  by  the  army  and  its  friends, 
and,  strangely  enough,  the  general  historians 
have  been  so  attracted  by  the  gallantry  dis 
played  in  great  land  battles,  and  the  imme 
diate  results,  that  they  have  utterly  failed 
to  appreciate  the  services  of  the  United 
States  navy. 

The  Southerners  accomplished  remark 
able  results  with  torpedoes  with  the  Merri- 
mac  or  Virginia  and  their  little  fleet  of  com 
merce  destroyers;  but  the  United  States 
navy,  by  its  effective  blockade,  starved  the 
Confederacy  to  death.  The  Southern  gov 
ernment  could  not  market  its  cotton,  nor 
could  it  import  or  manufacture  enough  mili 
tary  supplies.  Among  its  extremest  needs 
were  rails  and  rolling  stock  to  refit  its  lines 
of  communication.  For  want  of  transpor 
tation  it  was  unable  to  concentrate  its 
armies,  and  for  the  same  reason  its  troops 
were  not  half  fed. 

198 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

In  addition  to  its  services  on  the  block 
ade,  which,  in  Lord  Wolseley's  opinion, 
decided  the  war,  the  navy,  with  General 
Grant's  help,  cut  the  Confederacy  in  twain 
by  way  of  the  Mississippi.  It  penetrated 
every  Southern  river,  severing  Confederate 
communications  and  destroying  depots  of 
supplies.  It  assisted  in  the  capture,  early  in 
the  war,  of  Forts  Henry  and  Donelson,  and 
it  conducted  Union  troops  along  the  Ten 
nessee  River  into  east  Tennessee  and  north 
Alabama.  It  furnished  objective  points 
and  supplies  at  Savannah,  Charleston,  and 
Wilmington,  to  Sherman  on  his  march  from 
Atlanta ;  and  finally  Grant,  the  great  Union 
general,  who  had  failed  to  reach  Richmond 
by  way  of  the  Wilderness,  Spottsylvania,  and 
Cold  Harbor,  achieved  success  only  when  the 
navy  was  at  his  back,  holding  his  base,  while 
he  laid  a  nine  months'  siege  to  Petersburg. 

That  distinguished  author,  Charles  Fran 
cis  Adams,  himself  a  Union  general  in  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  says  that  the  United 
States  navy  was  the  deciding  factor  in  the 
Civil  War.  He  even  says  that  every  single 
successful  operation  of  the  Union  forces 
"  hinged  and  depended  on  naval  supremacy." 
199 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

The  following  is  from  the  preface  to 
"The  Crisis  of  the  Confederacy,"  in  which, 
published  in  1905,  a  foreign  expert,  Captain 
Cecil  Battine,  of  the  King's  Hussars,  con 
denses  all  that  needs  further  to  be  said  here 
about  the  purely  military  side  of  the  Civil 
War: 

The  history  of  the  American  Civil  War  still  re 
mains  the  most  important  theme  for  the  student 
and  the  statesman  because  it  was  waged  between 
adversaries  of  the  highest  intelligence  and  courage, 
who  fought  by  land  and  sea  over  an  enormous  area 
with  every  device  within  the  reach  of  human  inge 
nuity,  and  who  had  to  create  every  organization 
needed  for  the  purpose  after  the  struggle  had  begun. 
The  admiration  which  the  valor  of  the  Confederate 
soldiers,  fighting  against  superior  numbers  and  re 
sources,  excited  in  Europe;  the  dazzling  genius  of 
some  of  the  Confederate  generals,  and  in  some  meas 
ure  jealousy  at  the  power  of  the  United  States,  have 
ranged  the  sympathies  of  the  world  during  the  war 
and  ever  since  to  a  large  degree  on  the  side  of  the 
vanquished.  Justice  has  hardly  been  done  to  the 
armies  which  arose  time  and  again  from  sanguinary 
repulses,  and  from  disasters  more  demoralizing  than 
any  repulse  in  the  field,  because  they  were  caused 
by  political  and  military  incapacity  in  high  places,  to 
redeem  which  the  soldiers  freely  shed  their  blood  as 
it  seemed  in  vain.  If  the  heroic  endurance  of  the 
Southern  people  and  the  fiery  valor  of  the  Southern 
200 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

armies  thrill  us  to-day  with  wonder  and  admiration, 
the  stubborn  tenacity  and  courage  which  succeeded 
in  preserving  intact  the  heritage  of  the  American 
nation,  and  which  triumphed  over  foes  so  formid 
able,  are  not  less  worthy  of  praise  and  imitation. 
The  Americans  still  hold  the  world's  record  for  hard 
fighting. 

The  great  majority  of  the  Union  soldiers 
enlisted  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union 
and  not  for  the  abolition  of  slavery.  But 
among  these  soldiers  there  was  an  abolition 
element,  and  very  soon  the  tramp  of  fed 
eral  regiments  was  keeping  time  to 

"John  Brown's  body  lies  a  mouldering  in  the  ground, 
As  we  go  marching  on." 

Early  in  the  war  Generals  Fremont  and 
Butler  issued  orders  declaring  free  the  slaves 
within  the  Union  lines;  these  orders  Presi 
dent  Lincoln  rescinded.  But  Abolition  sen 
timent  was  growing  in  the  army  and  at  the 
North,  and  the  pressure  upon  the  President 
to  strike  at  slavery  was  increasing.  The 
Union  forces  were  suffering  repeated  defeats; 
slaves  at  home  were  growing  food  crops  and 
caring  for  the  families  of  Confederates  who 
were  fighting  at  the  front,  and  in  September, 

2OI 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

1862,  President  Lincoln  issued  his  prelim 
inary  proclamation  of  emancipation,  basing 
it  on  the  ground  of  military  necessity.  It 
was  to  become  effective  January  i,  1863. 

And  here  was  the  same  Lincoln  who  had 
declared  in  1858  his  opinion  that  whites  and 
blacks  could  not  live  together  as  equals, 
socially  and  politically;  and  it  was  the  very 
same  Lincoln  who  had  repeatedly  said  he 
cherished  no  ill-will  against  his  Southern 
brethren.  If  the  slaves  were  to  be  freed,  they 
and  the  whites  should  not  be  left  together. 
He  therefore  sought  diligently  to  find  some 
home  for  the  freedmen  in  a  foreign  country. 
But  unfortunately,  as  already  seen,  the 
American  negro,  a  bone  of  contention  at 
home,  was  now  a  pariah  to  other  peoples. 
Most  nations  welcome  immigrants,  but  no 
country  was  willing  to  shelter  the  American 
freedman,  save  only  Liberia,  long  before  a 
proven  failure,  and  Hayti,  where,  under  the 
blacks,  anarchy  had  already  been  chronic 
for  half  a  century.  Hume  tells  us,  in  "The 
Abolitionists,"  that  for  a  time  Mr.  Lincoln 
even  considered  setting  Texas  apart  as  a 
home  for  the  negro. 

Later  the  surrender  of  the  Confederate 

202 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

armies,  together  with  the  adoption  of  the 
Thirteenth  Amendment  to  the  Constitu 
tion,  consummated  emancipation,  foreseeing 
which  President  Lincoln  formulated  his  plan 
of  Reconstruction.  Suffrage  in  the  recon 
structed  States  under  his  plan  was  to  be 
limited  to  those  who  were  qualified  to  vote 
at  the  date  of  secession,  which  meant  the 
whites.  The  sole  exception  he  ever  made 
to  this  rule  was  a  suggestion  to  Governor 
Hahn,  of  Louisiana,  that  it  might  be  well 
for  the  whites  (of  Louisiana)  to  give  the 
ballot  to  a  few  of  the  most  intelligent  of 
the  negroes  and  to  such  as  had  served  in 
the  army. 

The  part  the  soldiers  played,  Federal  and 
Confederate,  in  restoring  the  Union,  is  a 
short  story.  The  clash  between  them  set 
tled  without  reserve  the  only  question  that 
was  really  in  issue — secession ;  slavery,  that 
had  been  the  origin  of  sectional  dissensions, 
was  eliminated  because  it  obstructed  the 
success  of  the  Union  armies.  By  their  gal 
lantry  in  battle  and  conduct  toward  each 
other  the  men  in  blue  and  the  men  in  gray 
restored  between  the  North  and  the  South 
the  mutual  respect  that  had  been  lost  in 
203 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  bitterness  of  sectional  strife,  and  with 
out  which  there  could  be  no  fraternal  Union. 

Mr.  Gladstone,  when  the  war  was  on, 
said  that  the  North  was  endeavoring  to 
"propagate  free  institutions  at  the  point  of 
the  sword."  The  North  was  not  seeking  to 
propagate  in  the  South  any  new  institution 
whatever.  Mr.  Gladstone's  paradox  loses 
its  point  because  both  sections  were  fighting 
for  the  preservation  of  the  same  system  of 
government. 

The  time  has  now  happily  come  when,  to 
use  the  language  of  Senator  Hoar,  as  Amer 
icans,  we  can,  North  and  South,  discuss  the 
causes  that  brought  about  our  terrible  war 
"in  a  friendly  and  quiet  spirit,  without  re 
crimination  and  without  heat,  each  under 
standing  the  other,  each  striving  to  help  the 
other,  as  men  who  are  bearing  a  common 
burden  and  looking  forward  with  a  common 
hope." 

The  country,  it  is  believed,  has  already 
reached  the  conclusions  that  the  South  was 
absolutely  honest  in  maintaining  the  right 
of  secession  and  absolutely  unswerving  in 
its  devotion  to  its  ideas  of  the  Constitution, 
and  that  the  North  was  equally  honest  and 
204 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

patriotic  in  its  fidelity  to  the  Union.  We 
need  to  advance  one  step  further.  Some 
body  was  to  blame  for  starting  a  quarrel 
between  brethren  who  were  dwelling  to 
gether  in  amity.  If  Americans  can  agree 
in  fixing  that  blame,  the  knowledge  thus 
acquired  should  help  them  to  avoid  such 
troubles  hereafter. 

It  seems  to  be  a  fair  conclusion  that  the 
initial  cause  of  all  our  troubles  was  the  forma 
tion  by  Garrison  of  those  Abolition  societies 
which  the  Boston  people  in  their  resolutions 
of  August  i,  1835,  "disapproved  of"  and 
described  as  "associations  instituted  in  the 
non-slave-holding  States,  with  the  intent  to 
act,  within  the  slave-holding  States,  on  the 
subject  of  slavery  in  those  States,  without 
their  consent."  And  further,  that  it  was  the 
creation  of  these  societies,  the  methods  they 
resorted  to,  and  their  explicit  defiance  of  the 
Constitution  that  roused  the  fears  and  pas 
sions  of  the  South  and  caused  that  section 
to  take  up  the  quarrel  that,  afterward  be 
came  sectional;  and  that,  after  much  hot 
dispute  and  many  regrettable  incidents, 
North  and  South,  resulted  in  secession  and 
war. 

205 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

In  every  dispute  about  slavery  prior  to 
1831,  the  Constitution  was  always  regarded 
by  every  disputant  as  supreme.  The  quar 
rel  that  was  fatal  to  the  peace  of  the  Union  be 
gan  when  the  New  Abolitionists  put  in  the  new 
claim,  that  slavery  in  the  South  was  the  con 
cern  of  the  North,  as  well  as  of  the  South,  and 
that  there  was  a  higher  law  than  the  Constitu 
tion.  If  the  conscience  of  the  individual,  in 
stead  of  human  law,  is  to  prescribe  rules  of 
conduct,  society  is  at  the  mercy  of  anarchists. 
Czolgosz  was  conscientious  when  he  murdered 
McKinley. 

Had  all  Americans  continued  to  agree, 
after  1831,  as  they  did  before  that  time,  that 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was 
the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  there  would 
have  been  no  fatal  sectional  quarrel,  no  se 
cession,  and  no  war  between  the  North  and 
South. 

The  immediate  surrender  everywhere  of 
the  Confederates  in  obedience  to  the  orders 
of  their  generals  was  an  imposing  spectacle. 
There  was  no  guerilla  warfare.  The  Con 
federates  accepted  their  defeat  in  good  faith 
and  have  ever  since  been  absolutely  loyal 
206 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

to  the  United  States  Government,  but  they 
have  never  changed  their  minds  as  to  the 
justice  of  the  cause  they  fought  for.  They 
fought  for  liberty  regulated  by  law,  and 
against  the  idea  that  there  can  be,  under  our 
system,  any  higher  law  than  the  Constitu 
tion  of  our  country.  That  the  Constitution 
should  always  be  the  supreme  law  of  the 
land,  they  still  believe,  and  the  philosophic 
student  of  past  and  current  history  should 
be  gratified  to  see  the  tenacity  with  which 
Southern  people  still  cling  to  that  idea.  It 
suggests  that  not  only  will  the  Southerners 
be  always  ready  to  stand  for  our  country 
against  a  foreign  foe,  but  that  whenever  our 
institutions  shall  be  assailed,  as  they  will 
often  be  hereafter  by  visionaries  who  are 
impatient  of  restraints,  the  cause  of  liberty, 
regulated  by  law,  will  find  staunch  defenders 
in  the  Southern  section  of  our  country. 


207 


CHAPTER  X 

RECONSTRUCTION,  LINCOLN-JOHNSON 
PLAN   AND   CONGRESSIONAL. 

PRESIDENT  LINCOLN'S  theory  was 
that  acts  of  secession  were  void,  and 
that  when  the  seceded  States  came  back  into 
the  Union  those  who  were  entitled  to  vote, 
by  the  laws  existing  at  the  date  of  the  at 
tempted  secession,  and  had  been  pardoned, 
should  have,  and  should  control,  the  right 
of  suffrage.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  acted  on  this 
theory  in  Tennessee,  Louisiana,  and  Texas, 
and  he  further  advised  Congress,  in  his 
message  of  December,  1863,  that  this  was 
his  plan.  Congress,  after  a  long  debate,  re 
sponded  in  July,  1864,  by  an  act  claiming 
for  itself  power  over  Reconstruction.  The 
President  answered  by  a  pocket  veto,  and 
after  that  veto  Mr.  Lincoln  was,  in  Novem 
ber,  1864,  re-elected  on  a  platform  extolling 
his  "practical  wisdom,"  etc.  Congress, 
during  the  session  that  began  in  December, 
1864,  did  not  attempt  to  reassert  its  au- 
208 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

thority  but  adjourned,  March  4,  1865,  in 
sight  of  the  collapse  of  the  Confederacy, 
leaving  the  President  an  open  field  for  his 
declared  policy. 

But  unhappily,  on  the  I4th  of  April,  1865, 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  assassinated,  and  his  death 
just  at  this  time  was  the  most  appalling  ca 
lamity  that  ever  befell  the  American  people. 
The  blow  fell  chiefly  upon  the  South,  and 
it  was  the  South  the  assassin  had  thought 
to  benefit. 

Had  the  great  statesman  lived  he  might, 
and  it  is  fully  believed  he  would,  like 
Washington,  have  achieved  a  double  success. 
Washington,  successful  in  war,  was  success 
ful  in  guiding  his  country  through  the  first 
eight  stormy  years  of  its  existence  under  a 
new  constitution.  Lincoln  had  guided  the 
country  through  four  years  of  war,  and  the 
Union  was  now  safe.  With  Lee's  surrender 
the  war  was  practically  at  an  end. 

Gideon  Welles  says  that  on  the  loth  of 
April,  1865,  Mr.  Lincoln,  "while  I  was  with 
him  at  the  White  House,  was  informed  that 
his  fellow-citizens  would  call  to  congratu 
late  him  on  the  fall  of  Richmond  and  sur 
render  of  Lee;  but  he  requested  their  visit 
209 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

should  be  delayed  that  he  might  have  time 
to  put  his  thoughts  on  paper,  for  he  desired 
that  his  utterances  on  such  an  occasion 
should  be  deliberate  and  not  liable  to  misap 
prehension,  misinterpretation,  or  miscon 
struction.  He  therefore  addressed  the  people 
on  the  following  evening,  Tuesday  the  nth, 
in  a  carefully  prepared  speech  intended  to 
promote  harmony  and  union. 

"In  this  remarkable  speech,  delivered  three 
days  before  his  assassination,  he  stated  he 
had  prepared  a  plan  for  the  reinauguration 
of  the  sectional  authority  and  reconstruction 
in  1863,  which  would  be  acceptable  to  the  ex 
ecutive  government,  and  that  every  member 
of  the  cabinet  fully  approved  the  plan,"  etc.1 

In  view  of  his  death  three  days  later,  this, 
his  last  and  deliberate  public  utterance,  may 
be  regarded  as  Abraham  Lincoln's  will,  de 
vising  as  a  legacy  to  his  countrymen  his  plan 
of  reconstruction.  That  plan  in  the  hands 
of  his  successor  was  defeated  by  a  partisan 
and  radical  Congress.  That  it  was  a  wise 
plan  the  world  now  knows. 

Senator  John  Sherman,  of  Ohio,  was  one 

1  Gideon  Welles  in  an  essay,  "  Lincoln   and  Johnson,"   The 
Galaxy,  April,  1872. 

2IO 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

of  the  most  influential  of  those  who  suc 
ceeded  in  defeating  it,  and  yet  he  lived  to 
say,  in  his  book  published  in  I895,1  Andrew 
Johnson  "adopted  substantially  the  plan 
proposed  and  acted  on  by  Mr.  Lincoln. 
After  this  long  lapse  of  time  I  am  con 
vinced  that  Mr.  Johnson's  scheme  of  reor 
ganization  was  wise  and  judicious.  It  was 
unfortunate  that  it  had  not  the  sanction  of 
Congress  and  that  events  soon  brought  the 
President  and  Congress  into  hostility." 

And  the  present  senator,  Shelby  Cul- 
lom,  of  Illinois,  who  as  a  member  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  voted  to  over 
throw  the  Lincoln-Johnson  plan  of  Recon 
struction,  has  furnished  us  further  testi 
mony.  He  says  in  his  book,  published  in 
1911 :2 

"To  express  it  in  a  word,  the  motive  of 
the  opposition  to  the  Johnson  plan  of  Re 
construction  was  a  firm  conviction  that  its 
success  would  wreck  the  Republican  party 
and,  by  restoring  the  Democracy  to  power, 
bring  back  Southern  supremacy  and  North 
ern  vassalage." 

"John  Sherman's  Recollections,"  vol.  I,  p.  361. 
3  "  Fifty  Years  of  Public  Service,"  Cullom,  p.  146. 

211 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

The  Republican  party,  then  dominant  in 
Congress,  felt  when  confronting  Reconstruc 
tion  that  it  was  facing  a  crisis  in  its  exist 
ence.  The  Democratic  party,  unitedly  op 
posed  to  negro  suffrage,  was  still  in  Northern 
States  a  power  to  be  reckoned  with.  Allied 
with  the  Southern  whites,  that  old  party 
might  again  control  the  government  unless, 
by  giving  the  negro  the  ballot,  the  Repub 
licans  could  gain,  as  Senator  Sumner  said, 
the  "allies  it  needed."  But  the  masses  at 
the  North  were  opposed  to  negro  suffrage, 
and  only  two  or  three  State  constitutions 
sanctioned  it.  Indeed,  it  may  be  safely  said 
that  when  Congress  convened  in  December, 
1865,  a  majority  of  the  people  of  the  North 
were  ready  to  follow  Johnson  and  approve 
the  Lincoln  plan  of  Reconstruction.  But 
the  extremists  in  both  branches  of  the  Con 
gress  had  already  determined  to  defeat  the 
plan  and  to  give  the  ballot  to  the  ex-slave. 
To  prepare  the  mind  of  the  Northern  peo 
ple  for  their  programme,  they  had  resolved 
to  rekindle  the  passions  of  the  war,  which 
were  now  smouldering,  and  utilize  all  the 
machinery,  military  and  civilian,  that  Con 
gress  could  make  effective. 
212 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Andrew  Johnson,1  who  as  vice-president 
now  succeeded  to  the  presidency,  though  a 
man  of  ability,  had  little  personal  influence 
and  none  of  Lincoln's  tact.  Johnson  re 
tained  Lincoln's  cabinet,  and  McCullough, 
who  was  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  under 
both  presidents,  says  in  his  "  Men  and  Meas 
ures  of  Half  a  Century,"  p.  378: 

"The  very  same  instrument  for  restoring 
the  national  authority  over  North  Carolina 
and  placing  her  where  she  stood  before  her 
secession,  which  had  been  approved  by  Mr. 
Lincoln,  was,  by  Mr.  Stanton,  presented  at 
the  first  cabinet  which  was  held  at  the  execu 
tive  mansion  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  death,  and, 
having  been  carefully  considered  at  two  or 
three  meetings,  was  adopted  as  the  Recon 
struction  policy  of  the  administration." 

Johnson  carried  out  this  plan.  All  the 
eleven  seceding  States  repealed  their  ordi 
nances  of  secession.  Their  voters,  from 
which  class  many  leaders  had  been  excluded 
by  the  presidential  proclamation,  all  took 

1  The  final  estimate  of  Gideon  Welles,  Secretary  of  the  Navy 
under  both  Lincoln  and  Johnson,  is  this:  "He  (Johnson)  has  been 
faithful  to  the  Constitution,  although  his  administrative  capa 
bilities  and  management  may  not  equal  some  of  his  predecessors. 
Of  measures  he  was  a  good  judge  but  not  always  of  men." — "Diary 
of  Gideon  Welles,"  vol.  Ill,  p.  556. 

213 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

the  oath  of  allegiance,  and  reconstructed 
their  State  governments.  From  most  of 
the  reconstructed  States,  senators  and  rep 
resentatives  were  in  Washington  asking  to 
be  seated  when  Congress  convened,  De 
cember  4,  1865. 

The  presidential  plan  of  Reconstruction 
had  been  promptly  accepted  by  the  people 
of  the  prostrate  States.  Almost  without 
exception  they  had,  when  permitted,  taken 
the  oath  and  returned  to  their  allegiance. 

The  wretchedness  of  these  people  in  the 
spring  of  1865  was  indescribable.  The  labor 
system  on  which  they  depended  for  most  of 
their  money-producing  crops  was  destroyed. 
Including  the  disabled,  twenty  per  cent  of 
the  whites,  who  would  now  have  been  bread 
winners,  were  gone.  The  credit  system  had 
been  universal,  and  credit  was  gone.  Banks 
were  bankrupt.  Confederate  currency  and 
bonds  were  worthless.  Provisions  were 
scarce  and  money  even  scarcer.  Many  land 
holders  had  not  even  plough  stock  with 
which  to  make  a  crop. 

There  was  some  cotton,  however,  that 
had  escaped  the  ravages  of  war,  and  a  large 
part  of  this  also  escaped  the  rapacious 
214 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

United  States  agents,  who  were  seizing  it 
as  Confederate  property.  This  cotton  was 
a  godsend.  There  was  another  supply  of 
money  that  came  from  an  unexpected  source. 
The  old  anti-slavery  controversy  had  made 
it  seem  perfectly  clear  to  many  moneyed 
men,  North,  that  free  labor  was  always  su 
perior  to  slave  labor;  and  now,  when  cotton 
was  bringing  a  good  price,  enterprising  men 
carried  their  money,  altogether  some  hun 
dreds  of  thousands  of  dollars,  into  the  sev 
eral  cotton  States,  to  buy  plantations  and 
make  cotton  with  free  negro  labor.  Free 
negro  labor  was  not  a  success.  Those  who 
had  reckoned  on  it  lost  their  money;  but  this 
money  went  into  circulation  and  was  helpful. 
Above  all  else  loomed  the  negro  problem. 
Five  millions  of  whites  and  three  and  a  half 
millions  of  blacks  were  to  live  together. 
Thomas  Jefferson  had  said,  "Nothing  is 
more  certainly  written  in  the  Book  of  Fate 
than  that  these  people  are  to  be  free;  nor 
is  it  less  certain  that  the  two  races,  equally  free, 
cannot  live  in  the  same  government.  Nature, 
habit,  opinion  have  drawn  indelible  lines 
between  them"  1  And  it  may  truly  be  said 

1  "Jefferson's  Works,"  vol.  I,  p.  48. 
215 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

of  Jefferson  that  he  was,  as  quite  recently 
he  was  declared  to  be  by  Dr.  Schurman, 
President  of  Cornell  University,  the  "apos 
tle  of  reason,  and  reason  alone." 

What  system  of  laws  could  Southern  con 
ventions  and  legislatures  frame,  that  would 
enable  them  to  accomplish  what  Jefferson 
had  declared  was  impossible?  This  was  the 
question  before  these  bodies  when  called  to 
gether  in  1865-66  by  Johnson  to  rehabili 
tate  their  States.  Two  dangers  confronted 
them.  One  was,  armed  bands  of  negroes, 
headed  by  returning  negro  soldiers.  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  feared  this.  Early  in  April  of 
that  very  year,  1865,  he  said  to  General 
Butler:  "I  can  hardly  believe  that  the  South 
and  North  can  live  in  peace  unless  we  can 
get  rid  of  the  negroes,  whom  we  have  armed 
and  disciplined,  and  who  have  fought  with  us, 
to  the  amount,  I  believe,  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand."  Mississippi,  and  perhaps 
one  other  State,  to  guard  against  the  danger 
from  this  source,  enacted  that  negroes  were 
only  to  bear  arms  when  licensed.  This  law 
was  to  be  fiercely  attacked. 

The  other  chief  danger  was  that  idleness 
among  the  negroes  would  lead  to  crime. 
216 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

It  soon  became  apparent  that  the  negro 
idea  was  that  freedom  meant  freedom  from 
work.  They  would  not  work  steadily,  even 
for  their  Northern  friends,  who  were  offer 
ing  ready  money  for  labor  in  their  cotton 
fields,  and  multitudes  were  loitering  in 
towns  and  around  Freedmen's  Bureau  of 
fices.  Nothing  seemed  better  than  the  old- 
time  remedies,  apprenticeship  and  vagrancy 
laws,  then  found  in  every  body  of  British  or 
American  statutes.  These  laws  Southern 
legislatures  copied,  with  what  appeared  to 
be  necessary  modifications,  and  these  laws 
were  soon  assailed  as  evidence  of  an  intent 
to  reduce  the  negro  again  to  slavery.  Mr. 
James  G.  Elaine,  in  his  "Twenty  Years," 
selected  the  Alabama  statutes  for  his  at 
tack.  In  the  writer's  book,  "Why  the  Solid 
South,"  pp.  31-36,  the  Alabama  statutes 
cited  by  Mr.  Elaine  are  shown  to  be  very 
similar  to  and  largely  copied  from  the  stat 
utes  of  Vermont,  Massachusetts,  and  Rhode 
Island. 

Had  Mr.  Lincoln  been  living  he  would 
have  sympathized  with  these  Southern  law 
makers  in  their  difficult  task.     But  to  the 
radicals  in  Congress  nothing  could  have  been 
217 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

satisfactory  that  did  not  give  Mr.  Sumner's 
party  the  "allies  it  needed." 

The  first  important  step  of  the  Congress 
that  convened  December  4,  1865,  was  to 
refuse  admission  to  the  congressmen  from 
the  States  reconstructed  under  the  Lincoln- 
Johnson  plan,  and  pass  a  joint  resolution  for 
the  appointment  of  a  Committee  of  Fifteen 
to  inquire  into  conditions  in  those  States. 

The  temper  of  that  Congress  may  be 
gauged  by  the  following  extract  from  the 
speech  of  Mr.  Shellabarger,  of  Ohio,  on  the 
passage  of  the  joint  resolution: 

"They  framed  iniquity  and  universal 
murder  into  law.  .  .  .  Their  pirates  burned 
your  unarmed  commerce  on  the  sea.  They 
carved  the  bones  of  your  dead  heroes  into 
ornaments,  and  drank  from  goblets  made 
out  of  their  skulls.  They  poisoned  your 
fountains;  put  mines  under  your  soldiers' 
prisons;  organized  bands,  whose  leaders 
were  concealed  in  your  homes;  and  com 
missions  ordered  the  torch  and  yellow  fever 
to  be  carried  to  your  cities  and  to  your 
women  and  children.  They  planned  one 
universal  bonfire  of  the  North  from  Lake 
Ontario  to  the  Missouri,"  etc. 
218 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Congress,  while  refusing  admission  to 
senators  elected  by  the_  legislatures  of  the 
reconstructed  States,  was  permitting  these 
very  bodies  to  pass  on  amendments  to 
the  Federal  Constitution;  and  such  votes 
were  counted.  Congress  now  proposed  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment,  Section  III  of 
which  provided  that  no  person  should  hold 
office  under  the  United  States  who,  having 
taken  an  oath,  as  a  Federal  or  State  officer, 
to  support  the  Constitution,  had  subse 
quently  engaged  in  the  war  against  the 
Union.  The  Southerners  would  not  vote 
for  a  provision  that  would  disfranchise  their 
leaders;  they  refused  to  ratify  the  Four 
teenth  Amendment,  and  this  helped  further 
to  inflame  the  radicals  of  the  North. 

After  the  Committee  of  Fifteen  had  been 
appointed,  Congress  proceeded  to  put  the 
reconstructed  States  under  military  control. 
In  the  debate  on  the  measure,  February  18, 
1867,  James  A.  Garfield,  who  was,  at  a  later 
date,  to  become  generous  and  conservative, 
said  exultingly:  "This  bill  sets  out  by  lay 
ing  its  hands  on  the  rebel  governments  and 
taking  the  very  breath  of  life  out  of  them ; 
in  the  next  place,  it  puts  the  bayonet  at  the 
219 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

breast  of  every  rebel  in  the  South;  in  the 
next  place,  it  leaves  in  the  hands  of  Con 
gress  utterly  and  absolutely  the  work  of 
Reconstruction." 

And  Congress  did  its  work.  Lincoln  was 
in  his  grave,  and  Johnson,  even  with  his 
vetoes,  was  powerless.  By  the  acts  of  March 
2  and  March  23,  1867,  the  reconstructed 
governments  were  swept  away.  Universal 
suffrage  was  given  to  the  negro  and  most  of 
the  prominent  whites  were  disfranchised. 

The  first  suffrage  bill  was  for  the  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia,  during  the  debate  on 
which  Senator  Sumner  said:  "Now,  to  my 
mind,  nothing  is  clearer  than  the  absolute 
necessity  of  suffrage  for  all  colored  persons 
in  the  disorganized  States.  It  will  not  be 
enough,  if  you  give  it  to  those  who  can  read 
and  write ;  you  will  not  in  this  way  acquire 
the  voting  force  you  need  there  for  the 
protection  of  Unionists,  whether  white  or 
black.  You  will  not  acquire  the  new  allies 
who  are  essential  to  the  national  cause." 

In  the  forty-first  Congress,  beginning 
March  4,  1871,  the  twelve  reconstructed 
States,  including  West  Virginia,  were  repre 
sented  by  twenty-two  Republicans  and  two 
220 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Democrats  in  the  Senate,  and  forty-eight 
Republicans  and  twelve  Democrats  in  the 
House  of  Representatives. 

Mr.  Sumner's  "new  allies"  were  ready  to 
answer  to  the  roll-call. 

When  Congress  had  convened  in  Decem 
ber,  1865,  its  radical  leaders  were  already 
bent  on  universal  suffrage  for  the  negro,  but 
the  Northern  mind  was  not  yet  prepared  for 
so  radical  a  measure.  The  "Committee  of 
Fifteen"  was  the  first  step  in  the  programme, 
which  was  to  hold  the  Southern  States  out 
of  the  Union  and  make  an  appeal  to  the 
passions  and  prejudices  of  Northern  voters 
in  the  congressional  elections  of  November, 
1866.  Valuable  material  for  the  coming 
campaign  was  already  being  furnished  by 
the  agents  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau.  These 
"adventurers,  broken  down  preachers,  and 
politicians,"  as  Senator  Fessenden,  of  Maine, 
called  them,  were,  and  had  been  for  some 
time,  reporting  "outrages,"  swearing  ne 
groes  into  midnight  leagues,  and  selecting 
the  offices  they  hoped  to  fill. 

But  the  chief  source  of  the  material  relied 
upon  in  the  congressional  campaign  of  1866 

221 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

to  exasperate  the  North,  and  prod  voters  to 
the  point  of  sanctioning  negro  suffrage  in 
the  South,  was  the  official  information  from 
the  Committee  of  Fifteen.  Its  subcommit 
tee  of  three,  to  take  testimony  as  to  Virginia, 
North  and  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Ala 
bama,  Mississippi,  and  Arkansas,  were  all 
Republicans.  The  doings  of  this  subcom 
mittee  in  Alabama  illustrate  their  methods. 
Only  five  persons,  who  claimed  to  be  citi 
zens,  were  examined.  These  were  all  Re 
publican  politicians.  The  testimony  of  each 
was  bitterly  partisan.  "Under  the  govern 
ment  of  the  State  as  it  then  existed,  no  one 
of  these  witnesses  could  hope  for  official 
preferment.  When  this  Reconstruction  plan 
had  been  completed  the  first  of  these  five 
witnesses  became  governor  of  his  State;  the 
second  became  a  senator  in  Congress;  the 
third  secured  a  life  position  in  one  of  the 
departments  in  Washington;  the  fourth  be 
came  a  circuit  judge  in  Alabama,  and  the 
fifth  a  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
District  of  Columbia — all  as  Republicans. 
There  was  no  Democrat  in  the  subcommit 
tee  which  examined  these  gentlemen,  to  cross- 
examine  them ;  and  not  a  citizen  of  Alabama 

222 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

was  called  before  that  subcommittee  to  con 
fute  or  explain  their  evidence."  l 

With  the  material  gathered  by  these 
means  and  from  these  sources,  the  honest 
voters  of  the  North  were  deluded  into  the 
election  of  a  Congress  that  went  to  Wash 
ington,  in  December,  1866,  armed  with  au 
thority  to  pass  the  Reconstruction  laws  of 
March,  1867. 

Southern  counsels  were  now  much  divided. 
Many  good  men,  like  Governor  Brown,  of 
Georgia ;  General  Longstreet  and  ex-Senator 
Albert  Gallatin  Brown,  of  Mississippi,  ad 
vised  acquiescence  and  assistance,  "not  be 
cause  we  approve  the  policy  of  Reconstruc 
tion,  but  because  it  is  the  best  we  can  do." 
These  advisers  hoped  that  good  men,  well 
known  to  the  negroes,  might  control  them 
for  the  country's  good;  and  zealous  efforts 
were  made  along  this  line  in  every  State,  but 
they  were  futile.  The  blacks  had  already, 
before  they  got  the  suffrage,  accepted  the 
leadership  of  those  claiming  to  be  the  "men 
who  had  freed  them."  These  leaders  were 
not  only  bureau  agents  but  army  camp- 
followers  ;  and  there  was  still  another  brood, 

1  "Why  the  Solid  South,"  p.  20. 
223 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

who  espied  from  afar  a  political  Eden  in  the 
prostrate  States  and  forthwith  journeyed 
to  it.  All  these  Northern  adventurers  were 
called  "carpet-baggers"-— they  carried  their 
worldly  goods  in  their  hand-bags.  The 
Southerners  who  entered  into  a  joint-stock 
business  with  them  became  "scalawags." 
These  people  mustered  the  negroes  into 
leagues,  and  everywhere  whispered  it  into 
their  ears  that  the  aim  of  the  Southern 
whites  was  to  reenslave  them. 

Politics  in  the  South  in  the  days  before 
the  war  had  always  been  more  or  less  in 
tense,  partly  because  there  were  so  many 
who  had  leisure,  and  partly  because  the  gen 
eral  rule  was  joint  political  discussions.  The 
seams  that  had  divided  Whigs  and  Demo 
crats,  Secessionists  and  Union  men,  had  not 
been  entirely  closed  up,  even  by  the  melting 
fires  of  the  Civil  War.  Old  feuds  for  a  time 
played  their  part  in  Southern  politics,  even 
after  March,  1867.  These  old  feuds  made 
it  difficult  for  Southern  whites  to  get  to 
gether  as  a  race;  and,  in  fact,  conservative 
men  dreaded  the  idea.  It  tended  toward 
an  actual  race  war  which,  for  many  years, 
had  been  a  nightmare;  but  in  every  recon- 
224 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

structed  State  the  negro  and  his  allies  finally 
forced  the  race  issue. 

The  new  rulers  not  only  increased  taxes 
and  misappropriated  the  revenues  of  coun 
ties,  cities,  and  States;  they  bartered  away 
the  credit  of  State  after  State.  Some  of 
the  States,  after  they  were  redeemed,  scaled 
their  debts  by  compromising  with  creditors; 
others  have  struggled  along  with  their  in 
creased  burdens. 

There  were  hundreds  of  negro  policemen, 
constables,  justices  of  the  peace,  and  legis 
lators  who  could  not  write  their  names. 
Justice  was  in  many  localities  a  farce. 
Ex-slaves  became  judges,  representatives  in 
Congress,  and  United  States  senators.  The 
eleven  Confederate  States  had  been  divided 
into  military  districts.  Many  of  the  officers 
and  men  who  were  scattered  over  the  coun 
try  to  uphold  negro  rule  sympathized  with 
the  whites  and  evidenced  their  sympathy  in 
various  ways.  Others,  either  because  they 
were  radicals  at  heart,  or  to  commend  them 
selves  to  their  superiors,  who  were  some  of 
them  aspiring  to  political  places,  were  super- 
serviceable  ;  and  it  was  not  uncommon  for  a 
military  officer,  in  a  case  where  a  negro  was 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

a  party,  to  order  a  judge  to  leave  the  bench 
and  himself  take  the  place.  In  communi 
ties  where  negro  majorities  were  overwhelm 
ing  there  were  usually  two  factions,  and  when 
political  campaigns  were  on  agents  for  these 
clans  often  scoured  the  fields  clear  of  labor 
ers  to  recruit  their  marching  bands.  In 
cities  these  bands  made  night  hideous  with 
shouts  and  the  noise  of  fifes  and  drums. 
The  negro  would  tolerate  no  defection  from 
his  ranks  to  the  whites,  and  negro  women 
were  more  intolerant  than  the  men.  It 
sometimes  happened  that  a  bloody  clash 
between  the  races  was  imminent  when  white 
men  sought  to  protect  a  negro  who  had 
dared  to  speak  in  favor  of  the  Democratic 
and  Conservative  party.  In  truth,  the  civ 
ilization  of  the  South  was  being  changed 
from  white  to  negroid. 

The  final  triumph  of  good  government  in 
all  the  States  was  at  last  accomplished  by 
accepting  the  race  issue,  as  in  Alabama  in 
1874.  The  first  resolution  in  the  platform  of 
the  "Democratic  and  Conservative  party" 
in  that  State  then  was,  "The  radical  and 
dominant  faction  of  the  Republican  party 
in  this  State  persistently,  and  by  fraudulent 
226 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

representations,  have  inflamed  the  passions 
and  prejudices  of  the  negroes,  as  a  race, 
against  the  white  people,  and  have  thereby 
made  it  necessary  for  the  white  people  to 
unite  and  act  together  in  self-defence  and 
for  the  preservation  of  white  civilization." 

The  people  of  North  Carolina  recovered 
the  right  of  self-government  in  1870.  Other 
States  followed  from  time  to  time,  the  last 
two  being  Louisiana  and  South  Carolina  in 
1877. 

Edwin  L.  Godkin,  who  was  for  long  at 
the  head  of  the  Nation  and  the  Evening  Post, 
of  New  York,  is  thought  by  some  competent 
judges  to  have  been  the  ablest  editor  this 
country  has  ever  had.  After  the  last  of  the 
negro  governments  set  up  in  the  South  had 
passed  away,  looking  back  over  the  whole 
bad  business,  Mr.  Godkin,  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  written  from 
Sweet  Springs,  West  Virginia,  September  3, 
1877,  said:  "I  do  not  see  in  short  how  the 
negro  is  ever  to  be  worked  into  a  system 
of  government  for  which  you  and  I  could 
have  much  respect."1 

1  Ogden's  "Life  and  Letters  of  Edwin  Lawrence  Godkin,"  vol. 
II,  p.  114. 

227 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

Garrison  is  dead.  At  the  centenary  of  his 
birth,  December  12, 1904,  an  effort  was  made 
to  arouse  enthusiasm.  There  was  only  a 
feeble  response;  but  we  still  have  extre 
mists.  Professor  Josiah  Royce,  of  Harvard, 
in  "Race  Questions"  (1906),  speaking  of 
race  antipathies  as  "trained  hatred,"  says, 
pp.  48-49:  "We  can  remember  that  they  are 
childish  phenomena  in  our  lives,  phenomena 
on  a  level  with  the  dread  of  snakes  or  of 
mice,  phenomena  that  we  share  with  the 
cats  and  with  the  dogs,  not  noble  phenom 
ena,  but  caprices  of  our  complex  nature." 


228 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  SOUTH  UNDER  SELF-GOVERNMENT 

T?OR  now  more  than  thirty  years,  whites 
JL  and  blacks,  both  free,  have  lived  to 
gether  in  the  reconstructed  States.  In  some 
of  them  there  have  been  local  clashes,  but  in 
none  of  them  has  there  been  race  war,  pre 
dicted  by  Jefferson  and  feared  by  Lincoln; 
and  there  probably  never  will  be  such  a  war, 
unless  it  shall  come  through  the  interven 
tion  of  such  an  outside  force  as  produced 
in  the  South  the  conflict  between  the  races 
at  the  polls  in  1868-76. 

Every  State  government  set  up  under  the 
plan  of  Congress  had  wrought  ruin,  and  the 
ruin  was  always  more  complete  where  the 
negroes  were  most  numerous,  as  in  South 
Carolina  and  Louisiana. 

The  rule  of  the  carpet-bagger  and  the 
negro  was  now  superseded  by  governments 
based  on  Abraham  Lincoln's  idea,  the  idea 
he  expressed  in  the  debate  with  Douglas  in 
1858,  when  he  said:  "While  they  [the  two 
229 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

races]  do  remain  together  there  must  be  the 
position  of  inferior  and  superior ,  and  I,  as 
much  as  any  other  man,  am  in  favor  of  hav 
ing  the  superior  position  assigned  to  the  white 


man.'' 


Conducted  on  this  basis,  the  present  gov 
ernments  in  the  reconstructed  States  have 
endured'now  for  periods  varying  from  thirty- 
six  to  forty-two  years,  and  in  every  State, 
without  any  exception,  the  prosperity  of 
both  whites  and  blacks  has  been  wonderful, 
and  this  in  spite  of  the  still  existent  abnor 
mal  animosities  engendered  by  congressional 
reconstruction. 

In  the  present  State  governments  the  race 
problem  seems  to  have  reached,  in  its  larger 
lines,  its  only  practicable  solution.  There  is 
still,  however,  much  friction  between  whites 
and  blacks.  Higher  culture  among  the 
masses,  especially  of  the  dominant  race,  and 
wise  leadership  in  both  races,  will  in  time 
minimize  this,  but  it  is  not  to  be  expected, 
nor  is  it  ever  to  be  desired,  that  racial  an 
tipathies  should  entirely  cease  to  exist.  The 
result  of  such  cessation  would  be  amalgama 
tion,  a  solution  that  American  whites  will 
never  tolerate. 

230 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Deportation,  as  a  solution  of  the  negro 
problem,  is  impracticable.  Mr.  Lincoln, 
much  as  he  desired  the  separation  of  the 
races,  could  not  accomplish  it,  even  when 
he  had  all  the  war  power  of  the  government 
in  his  hands.  He  was,  as  we  have  seen,  un 
able  to  find  a  country  that  would  take  the 
3,500,000  of  blacks  then  in  the  seceded 
States.  Now,  there  are  in  the  South,  includ 
ing  Delaware,  according  to  the  census  of  1910, 
8,749,390,  and,  quite  naturally,  the  American 
negro  is  more  unwilling  than  ever  to  leave 
America. 

Another  solution  sometimes  suggested  in 
the  South  is  the  repeal  of  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment,  which  declares  that  the  negro 
shall  not  be  deprived  of  the  ballot  because 
of  his  race,  but  agitation  for  this  would  ap 
pear  to  be  worse  than  useless. 

The  negro  vote  in  the  reconstructed  States 
is,  and  has  for  years  been,  quite  small,  not 
large  enough  to  be  considered  a  factor  in  any 
of  them.  One  cause  of  this  is  that  the  whites 
enforce  against  the  blacks  rigidly  the  tests 
required  by  law,  but  the  chief  reason  is, 
that  the  negro,  who  is  qualified,  does  not 
often  apply  for  registration.  He  finds  work 
231 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

now  more  profitable  than  voting.  He  can 
not,  he  knows,  control,  nor  can  he,  if  dis 
posed  to  do  so,  sell  his  ballot  as  he  once  did. 
One  of  the  most  signal  and  durable  evils  of 
Congressional  Reconstruction  was  the  utter 
debasement  of  the  suffrage  in  eleven  States 
where  the  ballot  had  formerly  been  notably 
pure.  Gideon  Welles  saw  clearly  when  he 
said  in  his  diary,  June  23,  1867  (p.  102, 
vol.  Ill):  "Under  the  pretence  of  elevating 
the  negro  the  radicals  are  degrading  the 
whites  and  debasing  the  elective  franchise, 
bringing  elections  into  contempt."  During 
the  rule  of  the  negro  and  the  alien,  in  every 
black  county,  where  the  negro  majority  was 
as  two  to  one,  there  were,  as  a  rule,  two  Re 
publican  candidates  for  every  fat  office,  and 
an  election  meant,  for  the  negro,  a  golden 
harvest.  Rival  candidates  were  mercilessly 
fleeced  by  their  black  constituencies,  and  the 
belief  South  is  that  as  a  rule  the  carpet 
baggers,  in  their  hegira,  returned  North  as 
poor  as  when  they  came. 

In    the    Reconstruction    era   the   whites 
fought  fraud  with  fraud ;  and  even  after  re 
covering  control  they,  the  whites,  felt  justi 
fied  in  continuing  to  defraud  the  negro  of 
232 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

his  vote.  To  restore  the  purity  of  the 
ballot-box  was  the  chief  reason  for  the 
amendments  to  State  constitutions,  by 
means  of  which  amendments,  having  in 
view  the  limitations  of  the  Federal  Consti 
tution,  as  many  negroes  and  as  few  whites 
as  was  practicable  were  excluded. 

This  accounts  in  part  for  the  smallness  of 
the  negro  vote  South.  A  more  potent  reason 
is  that  the  Democratic  party,  dominated  by 
whites,  selects  its  candidates  in  primaries; 
and  the  negro,  seeing  no  chance  to  win,  does 
not  care  to  pay  a  poll  tax  or  otherwise  qual 
ify  for  registration. 

Southern  whites  have  now  for  more  than 
three  decades  been  governing  the  blacks  in 
their  midst.  It  is  the  most  difficult  task 
that  has  ever  been  undertaken  in  all  the  his 
tory  of  popular  government,  but  sad  experi 
ence  has  demonstrated  that  legal  restriction 
of  the  negro  vote  in  the  South  there  must  be. 

Party  spirit  tends  always  to  blind  the  vi 
sion,  and,  as  we  have  seen  in  this  review 
of  the  past,  it  often  stifles  conscience;  and 
this  even  where  the  masses  of  the  people 
are  approximately  homogeneous.  Southern 
statesmen  are  now  dealing  not  only  with 
233 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

party  spirit,  but  with  perpetual  race  fric 
tion  manifesting  itself  in  various  forms. 
Failure  there  must  be  in  minor  matters  and 
in  certain  localities;  the  progress  that  has 
been  made  can  only  be  fairly  estimated  by 
considering  general  results.  Those  who  sym 
pathize  with  the  South  think  they  see  there 
among  the  whites  a  growing  spirit  of  altru 
ism,  begotten  of  responsibility,  and  this 
promises  much  for  the  amelioration  of  race 
friction. 

Since  obtaining  control  of  their  State  gov 
ernments  the  whites  in  the  Southern  States 
have  as  a  rule  increased  appropriations  for 
common  schools  by  at  least  four  hundred 
per  cent,  and  though  paying  themselves  by 
far  the  greater  proportion  of  these  taxes, 
they  have  continued  to  divide  revenues  pro 
rata  between  the  white  and  colored  schools. 

Industrial  results  have  been  amazing. 
The  following  figures,  taken  from  the  Annual 
Blue  Book,  1911  edition,  of  the  Manufac 
turers9  Record,  Baltimore,  Maryland,  in 
clude  West  Virginia  among  the  recon 
structed  States. 

The  population  of  these  States  was,  in 
1880,  13,608,703;   in  1910,  23,613,533. 
234 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Manufacturing  capital,  1880,  £147,156,- 
624.  In  1900 — twenty  years -- it  was 
$1,019,056,200. 

Cotton  crop,  whole  South,  1880,  5,761,- 
252  bales.  In  1911  it  was  about  15,000,000. 

Of  this  cotton  crop  Southern  mills  took, 
in  1880,  321,337  bales,  and  in  1910,  2,344,- 
343  bales. 

In  1880  the  twelve  reconstructed  States 
cut,  of  lumber,  board  measure,  2,981,274,- 
ooo  feet;  and  in  1909  22,445,000,000  feet. 

Their  output  of  pig-iron  was,  in  1880, 
264,991  long  tons;  in  1910,  3,048,000  tons. 
The  assessed  value  of  taxable  property  was, 
in  1880,  £2,106,971,271;  in  1910,  £6,522,- 

195,139. 

The  negro,  though  the  white  man,  with 
his  superior  energy  and  capacity,  far  out 
strips  him,  has  shared  in  this  material  pros 
perity.  His  property  in  these  States  has 
been  estimated  as  high  as  £500,000,000. 

During  the  last  decade,  1900-1910,  the 
white  population  of  the  South  increased  by 
24.4  per  cent,  while  the  negro  population  in 
the  same  States  increased  only  10.4  per  cent. 
There  has  been  a  very  considerable  gain  of 
whites  over  blacks  since  1880,  the  result 
largely  of  a  greater  natural  increase  of  whites 
235 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

over  blacks,  immigrants  not  counted.  All 
this  indicates  that  the  negro  problem  is 
gradually  being  minimized. 

Taken  in  the  aggregate,  the  shortcomings 
of  the  negro  are  numerous  and  regrettable, 
but  not  greater  than  was  to  be  expected. 
The  general  advance  of  an  inferior  race  will 
never  equal  that  of  one  which  is  superior  by 
nature  and  already  centuries  ahead.  The 
laggard  and  thriftless  among  the  inferior 
people  will  naturally  be  more,  and  it  is  from 
these  classes  that  prison  houses  are  filled. 

There  is  a  very  considerable  class  of  ne 
groes  who  are  improving  mentally  and  mor 
ally,  but  improvidence  is  a  characteristic  of 
the  race,  and  very  many  of  them,  even 
though  they  labor  more  or  less  steadily,  will 
never  accumulate.  The  third  class,  much 
larger  than  among  the  whites,  is  composed 
of  those  who  are  idle,  dissipated,  and  crim 
inal.  Taken  altogether,  however,  what 
Booker  Washington  says  is  true:  "There 
cannot  be  found,  in  the  civilized  or  uncivil 
ized  world,  a  like  number  of  negroes  whose 
economic,  educational,  and  religious  life  is 
so  far  advanced  as  that  of  the  ten  millions 
within  this  country."1  This  advancement 

1  Pickett,  pp.  399-400. 

236 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

is  one  of  the  results  of  slavery.  When  the 
negroes  come  to  recognize  this,  as  some  of 
their  leaders  already  do,1  and  come  to  ap 
preciate  the  advantages  for  further  improve 
ment  they  have  had  since  their  emancipa 
tion,  they  will  cease  to  repine  over  the 
bondage  of  their  ancestors.  There  were 
undoubtedly  evils  in  slavery,  but,  after  all, 
there  was  some  reason  in  the  advice  given 
by  the  good  Spanish  Bishop  Las  Casas  to 
the  King  of  Spain — that  it  would  be  right 
ful  to  enslave  and  thus  Christianize  and 
civilize  the  African  savage.  Herbert  Spen 
cer,  "Illustrations  of  Universal  Progress" 
(p.  444),  says:  "Hateful  though  it  is  to  us, 
and  injurious  as  it  would  be  now,  slavery 
was  once  beneficial,  was  one  of  the  necessary 
phases  of  human  progress" 

Sir  Harry  Johnston,  African  explorer  and 
student  of  the  negro  race,  in  both  the  old 
and  the  new  world,  and  perhaps  the  most 
eminent  authority  on  a  question  he  has,  in 
a  fashion,  made  his  own,  says:  "Intellect 
ually,  and  perhaps  physically,  he  (the  negro) 
has  attained  the  highest  degree  of  advance 
ment  as  yet  in  the  United  States.2 

1  "The  Negro  Problem,"  Pickett,  1909,  pp.  399-400. 

3  "The  Negro  in  the  New  World,"  Sir  Harry  Johnston,  p.  478, 

237 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

"In  Alabama  (most  of  all)  the  American 
negro  is  seen  at  his  best,  as  peasant,  peasant 
proprietor,  artisan,  professional  man,  and 
member  of  society." 

Race  animosities  are  now  abnormal,  both 
South  and  North.  The  prime  reasons  for 
this  are  two: 

i.  The  bitter  conflict  during  reconstruc 
tion  for  race  supremacy  and  the  false  hopes 
once  held  out  to  the  negro  of  ultimate  social 
equality  with  the  whites.  Among  the  early 
measures  of  congressional  reconstruction 
was  a  "civil  rights"  enactment  which  the 
negroes  regarded  as  giving  to  them  all  the 
rights  of  the  white  man.  Their  Supreme 
Court  in  Alabama  decided,  in  "Burns  vs. 
The  State,"  that  the  "civil  rights"  laws  con 
ferred  the  right  to  intermarriage.  Negroes, 
North,  no  doubt  also  believed  in  this  con 
struction.  But  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  later  held  that  the  States, 
and  not  Congress,  had  jurisdiction  over  the 
marriage  relation  within  the  States.  All  the 
Southern  and  a  number  of  the  Northern  States 
have  since  forbidden  the  intermarriage  of 
whites  and  blacks,  and  so  the  negro's  hopes  of 
equal  rights  in  this  regard  have  vanished. 
1  /£.,  p.  470. 
238 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

This  disappointment  and  his  utter  fail 
ure  to  secure  the  social  equality  that  once 
seemed  his,  have  tended  to  embitter  the 
negro  against  the  white  man. 

2.  Whites  have  been  embittered  against 
blacks  by  the  frequency  in  later  years  of 
the  crime  of  the  negro  against  white  women. 
This  horrible  offence  began  to  be  common 
in  the  South  some  thirty-two  or  three  years 
since,  or  perhaps  a  little  earlier,  and  some 
what  later  it  appeared  in  the  North,  where 
it  seems  to  have  been  as  common,  negro 
population  considered,  as  in  the  South.  The 
crime  was  almost  invariably  followed  by 
lynching,  which,  however,  was  not  always 
for  the  same  crime.  The  following  is  the 
list  of  lynchings  in  the  sections,  as  kept  by 
the  Chicago  Tribune  since  it  began  to  com 
pile  them: 


"^-J  .  . 

1886  

>w*r    *"?j  '  • 

,  .  n8   1804. 

IQO 

1887.. 

.  122     l8Qs  .  . 

.  *y\s 
171 

1888  

142     1896 

181 

1880.  . 

,  .  176    1807 

1  66 

1890.. 

,  .  127     1898.  . 

127 

1891.  . 

IQ2     l8OQ 

IO7 

1802.  . 

.  2CK     IQOO 

IO7 

239 

THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

1901 185  1906 66 

1902 96  1907 68 

1903 104  1908 100 

1904 87  1909 87 

1905 66  1910 74 

The  general  decrease,  while  population  is 
increasing,  is  encouraging;  but  lynching  it 
self  is  a  horrible  crime;  and  lynching  for  one 
crime  begets  lynching  for  another.  Of  the 
total  number  lynched  last  year,  nine  were 
whites ;  sixty-five  were  negroes,  among  them 
three  women;  and  only  twenty- two  were 
for  crimes  of  negroes  against  white  women. 
The  other  crimes  were  murder,  attempts  to 
murder,  robbery,  arson,  etc. 

Census  returns  indicate  that  in  the  coun 
try  at  large  the  criminality  of  the  negro,  as 
compared  with  that  of  the  white  man,  is 
nearly  three  times  greater,  and  that  the 
ratio  of  negro  criminality  is  much  higher 
North  than  South.  Such  returns  also  in 
dicate  that  so  far  education  has  not  lessened 
negro  criminality,1  but  it  is  not  known  that 
any  well-educated  negro  has  been  guilty  of 
the  crime  against  white  women. 

1  "The  Negro  Problem,"  William  Pickett,  pp.  136-38.  Rare 
Traits,  etc.,  of  the  Negro,  Statistician,  Pruderitial  Ins,  Co.  of 
America,  p.  219  et  seq. 

240 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

In  the  South  the  negro  is  excluded  from 
many  occupations  for  which  the  best  of 
them  are  fitted,  but  in  the  North  his 
industrial  conditions  are  worse.  Fewer 
occupations  are  open  to  him  and  the  wisest 
members  of  his  race  are  counselling  him 
to  remain  in  the  more  favorable  industrial 
atmosphere  of  the  South. 

The  dislike  of  negroes  for  whites  has  been 
increased  South  by  the  laws  which  separate 
them  from  whites  in  schools,  public  con 
veyances,  etc.  But  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  these  laws  were  intended  to  prevent 
intermarriage ;  they  are  in  part  the  result  of 
race  antipathies.  But  the  sound  reason  for 
them  is  that  they  tend  to  prevent  intimacies 
which,  at  the  points  where  the  races  are  in 
closest  touch  with  each  other,  might  result 
in  intermarriage.  Professor  E.  D.  Cope,  of 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  one  of  the 
very  highest  of  American  authorities  on  the 
race  question,  in  a  powerful  article  published 
in  1890^  advocated  the  deportation  of  the 
negroes  from  the  South,  no  matter  at  what 
cost.  Otherwise  he  predicted  eventual  amal- 

1  "Two  Perils  of  the  Indo-European,"  The  Open  Court,  Janu 
ary  23,  1890,  p.  2052. 

24I 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

gamation,  which  would  be  the  destruction  of 
a  large  portion  of  the  finest  race  in  the  world. 

This  little  study  now  comes  to  a  close.  An 
effort  has  been  made  to  sketch  briefly  in  this 
chapter  the  difficulties  the  South  has  en 
countered  in  dealing  with  the  negro  prob 
lem,  and  to  outline  the  measure  of  success 
it  has  achieved.  However  imperfectly  the 
author  may  have  performed  his  task,  it  must 
be  clear  to  the  reader  that  no  such  problem 
as  the  present  was  ever  before  presented  to 
a  self-governing  people.  Never  was  there 
so  much  need  of  that  culture  from  which 
alone  can  come  a  high  sense  of  duty  to 
others.  The  negro  must  be  encouraged  to 
be  self-helpful  and  useful  to  the  community. 
If  he  is  to  do  all  this  and  remain  a  separate 
race,  he  must  have  leadership  among  his 
own  people.  In  the  Mississippi  Black  Belt 
there  is  now  a  town  of  some  4,000  negroes, 
Mound  Bayou,  completely  organized  and 
prospering.  It  may  be  that  in  the  future 
negroes  seeking  among  themselves  the  amen 
ities  of  life  may  congregate  into  communi 
ties  of  their  own,  cultivating  adjacent  lands, 
as  the  French  do  in  their  agricultural  vil- 
242 


AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

lages.  Wherever  they  may  be,  they  must 
practise  the  civic  virtues,  honesty,  and  obe 
dience  to  law.  W.  H.  Councill,  a  negro 
teacher,  of  Huntsville,  Alabama,  said  some 
years  since  in  a  magazine  article:  "When 
the  gray-haired  veterans  who  followed  Lee 
and  Jackson  pass  away,  the  negro  will  have 
lost  his  best  friends."  This  is  true,  but  it  is 
hoped  that  time  and  culture,  while  not  pro 
ducing  social  equality,  will  allay  race  ani 
mosities  and  bring  the  negro  other  friends 
to  take  the  place  of  the  departing  veterans. 

The  white  man,  with  his  pride  of  race, 
must  more  and  more  be  made  to  feel  that 
noblesse  oblige.  His  sense  of  duty  to  others 
must  measure  up  to  his  responsibilities  and 
opportunities.  He  must  accord  to  the  ne 
gro  all  his  rights  under  the  laws  as  they 
exist. 

The  South  is  exerting  itself  to  better  its 
common  schools,  but  it  cannot  compete  in 
this  regard  with  the  North.  Northern  phi 
lanthropists  are  quite  properly  contributing 
to  education  in  the  South.  They  should 
consider  well  the  needs  of  both  races.  Any 
attempt  to  give  to  the  negroes  advantages 
superior  to  those  of  the  whites,  who  are  now 
243 


THE  ABOLITION  CRUSADE 

treating  the  negro  fairly  in  this  respect, 
might  look  like  another  attempt  to  put,  in 
negro  language,  "the  bottom  rail  on  top." 

Looking  over  the  whole  field  covered  by 
this  sketch,  it  is  wonderful  to  note  how  the 
chain  of  causation  stretches  back  into  the 
past.  Reconstruction  was  a  result  of  the 
war;  secession  and  war  resulted  from  a  move 
ment  in  the  North,  in  1831,  against  condi 
tions  then  existing  in  the  South.  The  negro, 
the  cause  of  the  old  quarrel  between  the  sec 
tions,  is  located  now  much  as  he  was  then. 
How  full  of  lessons,  for  both  the  South  and 
the  North,  is  the  history  of  the  last  eighty 
years ! 

There  is  even  a  chord  that  connects  the 
burning  of  a  negro  at  Coatesville,  Pennsyl 
vania,  by  an  excited  mob  on  the  I3th  of 
August,  1911,  with  the  burning  of  the  Fed 
eral  Constitution  at  Framingham,  Massachu 
setts,  by  that  other  excited  mob  of  madmen, 
under  Garrison,  on  the  fourth  day  of  July, 
1854.  One  body  of  outlaws  was  defying  the 
laws  of  Pennsylvania;  the  other  was  defy 
ing  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  nation. 


244 


INDEX 


Abolitionists,  mobbed,  71;  burn 
U.  S.  Constitution,  72;  private 
lives  of  leaders  irreproachable, 
89;  become  factor  in  national 
politics;  Boston  captured  by; 
"slave-catchers"  now  mobbed; 
national  election  turns  on  vote, 
95-6;  anti-slavery  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  97;  election  again  turns 
on  vote  of,  99;  impartial  ob 
server  on  influence  of,  105;  Pro 
fessor  Smith  on,  106 

Abolition  petitions  in  Congress, 
influence  of,  102 

Abolition  societies,  in  1840,  93 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  becomes 
champion  of  Abolitionists,  oo; 
defends  right  of  petition,  91 

Alien  and  Sedition  laws,  1798,  18; 
nature  of,  19 

Americans,  world's  record  for  hard 
fighting,  201 

Andrews,  Prof.  E.  A.,  slavery  con 
ditions  South,  79 

Anti-slavery  people  and  Abolition 
ists  grouped,  104;  Douglas 
charged  "Black  Republican" 
party  with  favoring  "  negro  citi 
zenship  and  negro  equality,"  167 

Aristocracy  in  South,  159,  160, 161 

Articles  of  Confederation,  15 

Author,  antecedents,  explanation 
of,  lo-n 

Author's  conclusions,  242-3-4 

Biglow  Papers,  97-8 

Birney,  James  G.,  mobbed,  87 

Boston  meeting,  Dr.  Hart  over 
looks,  73 

Boston  Resolutions,  64 

Burke,  Edmund,  on  conciliation, 
109;  spirit  of  liberty  in  slave- 
holding  communities,  158 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  prophecy  of, 
167-8 


Cause  of  sectional  conflict,  Aboli 
tion  societies  and  their  methods, 
205 

Channing,  Dr.  Wm.  E.,  encomium 
on  Great  Britain,  39;  letter  to 
Webster,  47;  opinion  of  Aboli 
tionists,  87;  his  change,  88 

Characters  and  careers,  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  and  Jefferson  Da 
vis,  188-192 

Churches,  North  and  South,  oppo 
sition  to  slavery;  a  stupendous 
change,  67;  "whole  cloth  ar 
rayed  against"  Garrison,  68; 
Southern  churches  still  defend 
slavery;  Northern  changed; 
Methodist  church  disrupted,  70 

Coatesville  lynching,  224 

Colonies,  juxtaposed,  not  united, 
IS 

Colonization  Society,  origin  of  and 
purposes,  44;  its  supporters,  45; 
making  progress;  Abolitionists 
halted  it,  46 

Compromise  of  1850;  excitement 
in  Congress,  106;  great  leaders 
in;  Webster  on  7th  of  March, 
107;  Clay's  speech,  112;  new 
fugitive  slave  law  gave  offence, 
128 

Confederate  States  with  old  Con 
stitution — changes  slight,  186 

Constitution,  Alien  and  Sedition 
Laws    first    palpable    infringe 
ment,  3;    powers  conferred  by 
discussed,  16;    as  supreme  law^r-\ 
Southerners  still  cling  to,  207 

Cope,  Prof.  E.  D.,  advocated  de 
portation  to  prevent  amalgama 
tion,  241 

Cotton  gin,  accepted  theory  as  to 
denied,  12 

Courage  of,  and  losses  in,  both  ar 
mies,  195 

Criminality,  of  negroes  greater 
than  of  whites,  240 


245 


INDEX 


Cromwell  and  the  Great  Revolu 
tion,  analogy  to,  8 

Curtis,  George  Tick  nor,  quotation 
from  "Life  of  Buchanan,"  14 

Davis,  Jefferson,  farewell  speech, 
181;  doubts  about  success — sad 
ness,  190 

Democrats,  North,  opposed  negro 
suffrage,  212 

Deportation,  no  country  ready  to 
take  negro,  82 

Disunion,  project  among  Federal 
ist  leaders,  1803-4,  25;  senti 
ment  in  Congress,  1794,  24 

Emancipation,  easy  North;  dif 
ficult  South,  40;  Federal  gov 
ernment,  no  power  over,  41; 
status  North  in  1830,  52 

Emancipations,  South,  what  ac 
complished  in  1831,  50;  census 
tables,  51 

Embargo  of  1807,  why  repealed, 
26 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  eulogizes 
John  Brown,  15 

Everett,  Edward,  denunciation  of 
John  Brown  expedition,  152 

Extradition,  refused,  of  abductors 
of  slaves,  Supreme  Court  power 
less,  176 

Federalists,  construed  Constitu 
tion  liberally,  17 

Fite,  Professor  at  Yale,  declares 
Republicans  in  1860  hoped  to 
destroy  slavery,  175;  justifica 
tion  of  secession,  182 

Freedman's  Bureau,  its  composi 
tion,  221 

Free  speech,  Channing  defends 
Abolitionists  as  champions  of, 
87;  John  Quincy  Adams  be 
comes  advocate,  90 

Fugitive  slave  law,  North  not 
opposing  in  1828,  53;  Missouri 
Compromise  provided  for,  54 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  began 
Liberator;  personality  and  char 
acteristics,  56;  key-note,  slavery 
the  concern  of  all;  slave-holders 
to  be  made  odious,  58 


Godkin,  E.  L.,  on  negro  as  factor 

in  politics,  237 
Greeley,   Horace,   draws   comfort 

from  John  Brown's  raid,  153 

Hartford  Convention,  28 

Helper,  Hinton  Rowan,  his  book, 
165 

Higher  law  idea,  prompted  Abo 
lition  Crusade — and  Czolgosz  to 
murder  McKinley,  206 

Immigration  and  Union  sentiment ; 
number  of  immigrants,  33;  few 
South,  34 

Incendiary  literature,  sent  South, 
62;  North  aroused;  Andrew 
Jackson's  message,  63;  Boston 
Resolutions,  64;  indictment  in 
Alabama;  requisition  on  Gov 
ernor  of  New  York,  98 

Incompatibility  of  slavery  and 
freedom;  Lincoln's  Springfield 
speech,  81;  Garrison  first  to 
announce  doctrine;  Abraham 
Lincoln  next;  then  Seward, 
147-8 

Insurrections,  Denmark  Vesey 
plot  at  Charleston,  59;  Nat 
Turner  in  Virginia;  Walker's 
pamphlet.  60 

Irish  patriots,  Mitchel  and  Mea- 
gher,  divide 'on  secession,  35 

John  Brown's  raid,  149;  his  secret 
committee,  151 

Johnson,  Andrew,  succeeding 
Lincoln,  carried  out  plan,  213 

Johnston,  Sir  Harry,  on  negro  in 
South,  highest  degree  of  ad 
vancement,  257 

Kansas,  fierce  struggles  in;  Sum- 
ner's  bitter  speech,  142-3 

Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  Douglas 
originated,  135;  aggravated  sec 
tionalism,  136 

Kentucky  Resolutions,  1798,  19; 
Jefferson  the  author,  20;  copy 
of  first  of,  21 

Kentucky  and  Virginia  Resolu 
tions  of  1798-9;  Secessionists 
relied  on,  21;  Jefferson  and 
Madison's  reasons  for,  22 


246 


INDEX 


Know-Nothing  party,  its  origin; 
purposes;  appeal  for  the  Union, 
140-1-2 

Las  Casas,  Bishop,  advice  to  King 
of  Spain,  237 

Liberia,  sending  negroes  to,  called 
"expatriation";  enterprise  a 
failure,  46;  Lincoln's  hopes  of, 
81;  why  it  failed— Miss  Ma- 
honey's  account,  160-70-71 

Lincoln,  South  no  more  responsible 
for  slavery  than  North,  49; 
speech  at  Charleston,  111.,  81; 
finds  no  country  ready  to  take 
American  negro,  82;  South  in 
1860  thought  him  radical;  had 
favored  white  supremacy  in 
1858, 185;  speech  atPeoria,  186; 
assassination  of,  209 

Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  declares 
popular  verdict  against  Web 
ster,  118;  he  had  undertaken 
the  impossible,  120;  his  argu 
ment  good,  he  not  man  to  make 
it,  121 

Lundy,  Benjamin,  attempts  to  stir 
up  North  against  slavery  South, 
47 

LynchSngs,  tables,  239;  comments 
on,  240 

McM  aster,  affirms  Webster  behind 
the  times  (note),  100 

Missouri,  controversy  over  slavery, 
52;  distinct  from  that  begun 
later  by  "New  Abolitionists," 

Mobs,  Garrison  mobbed;  many 
anti-slavery  riots  North,  71; 
violence  toward  Abolitionists 
in  North  reacted,  85;  oppo 
nents  became  defenders,  86 

Mound  Bayou,  a  negro  town,  242 

Nationality,  spirit  of;  causes  of, 
development  of,  30;  grows, 
North;  South  on  old  lines,  35 

Navy,  U.  S.,  deciding  factor  in  war, 
198-9 

Negro,  the,  located  now  much  as  in 
1860,  7;  Lincoln  could  find  no 
home  abroad  for,  206;  reasons 
for  smallness  of  vote  South,  233 ; 


improvement;  Booker  Wash 
ington's  opinion,  236;  bene 
fited  by  slavery;  attained 
South  highest  degree  of  advance 
ment,  237;  best  opportunities 
South,  241;  Confederate  veter 
ans  best  friends  there,  243 

Ohio;  Resolutions  looking  to  co 
operative  emancipation;  re 
sponses  of  other  States  to,  42; 
Southern  reason  for,  43;  North 
ern,  kindly  temper  of,  44 

Otis,  Harrison  Gray,  on  Boston 
Resolutions,  65 

Pamphlets,  venomous  one  cited,  75 
Personal  liberty  laws,  eleven  States 

passed;      Alexander     Johnston 

says  absolutely  without  excuse, 

177 
Petition,  right  of,  in  Congress,  90; 

"gag  resolution,"  92 
Political    conditions,    North    and 

South  compared,  162-3-4 
"Poor  whites,"  discussion  of,  and 

of  social  conditions  South,  155- 

6-7 

Presidential  campaign    1860,   ex 
citement,  171 
Press,  Northern  slandering  South, 

153;  Southern  slandering  North, 

154 

Race  animosities,  negro's  aspira 
tions  to  social  equality;  legal 
enactments,  238;  whites  em 
bittered  by  crime  against  white 
women,  239 

Reagan,  "  Republican  rule  on  Abo 
lition  principles, "  105 

Reconstruction,  Lincoln's  theory; 
veto  of  resolution  asserting 
power  of  Congress  over,  208; 
last  speech,  adhering  to  plan, 
210 

Reconstruction  by  Johnson  under 
Lincoln  plan;  wisdom  of 
Lincoln-Johnson  plan,  John 
Sherman;  opposition  to  it  par 
tisan,  Senator  Cullom,  211; 
South  accepts  plan;  senators 
and  representatives,  214;  negro 
problem  and  Jefferson's  pre- 


247 


INDEX 


diction,  215;  apprenticeship 
and  vagrancy  laws,  Elaine's  at 
tack  on,  217 

Reconstruction,  Congressional,  ex 
tremists  bent  on  negro  suffrage 
when  Congress  convened  in 
1865,  212;  preparations  for; 
committee  of  fifteen;  Shella- 
barger's  appeal  to  war  passions, 
215;  South  denied  representa 
tion;  Southerners  reject  Four 
teenth  Amendment;  Garfield  de 
nounces  rebel  government,  219; 
Johnson's  reconstructed  State 
governments  swept  away;  uni 
versal  suffrage  for  negro;  South 
sends  Republicans  to  Congress, 
220;  witnesses  before  "Com 
mittee  of  Fifteen"  rewarded; 
Southern  counsels  divided,  223; 
carpet-baggers  and  scalawags, 
224;  intolerable  political  condi 
tions;  race  issue  forced  upon 
whites,  226;  whites  recover  self- 
government,  227 

Republican  party,  the  modern; 
its  origin;  Mr.  Rhodes  on,  138- 
139;  nominates  Fremont  and 
Dayton;  denounces  slavery;  ex 
citement;  defeated,  144 

Resources,  war,  North  and  South 
compared,  191-2-3 

Salem  Church  monument,  9 

Santo  Domingo,  memory  of  mas 
sacre  in,  80 

Seceded  States,  wretched  condi 
tions  in  1865,  214 

Seceding  States,  desire  to  pre 
serve  Constitution,  179 

Secession,  early  threats  of  not  con 
nected  with  slavery,  26;  Josiah 
Quincy  threatens,  1 81 1 ;  Massa 
chusetts  legislature  endorses 
him,  28;  in  early  days  belief 
in  general,  28;  Massachusetts 
legislature  threatens,  1844,  29; 
eleven  States  seceded,  179;  Prof. 
Fite  justifies,  his  ground,  182; 
motives  for  in  1860-1,  183 

Self-government  restored;  local 
clashes,  no  race  war;  based  on 
Lincoln's  idea,  superiority  of 
white  man,  229;  constitutional 


amendments  to  restore  purity 
of  ballot,  233;  industrial  results 
amazing,  234-5;  negro  vote 
small — reasons,  231 

Seward,  leader  of  Republican 
party,  178 

Situation  in  Alabama  in  1835 — 
letter  of  John  W.  Womack,  79 

Slavery,  Great  Britain  abolishes, 
compensates  owners,  39;  South's 
"calamity  not  crime,"  48;  de 
bate  in  Virginia  Assembly,  61 

Slaves,  protect  masters'  families 
during  war,  132-3;  a  surprise  to 
North,  133-4 

Slave-trade,  New  England's  part 
in,  37;  South  protests  against; 
sentiment  against  arises  in  Eng 
land,  sweeps  over  America,  38 

Social  conditions  South,  155-60 

South  unwilling  to  accept  idea  of 
incompatibility  of  slave  and  free 
States,  94-5;  bitterness  in,  101; 
on  defensive-aggressive,  126; 
excited;  filibustering;  importa 
tion  of  slaves,  145 

Spencer,  Herbert,  slavery  once  a 
necessary  phase  of  human  prog 
ress,  237 

Sprague,  Peleg,  on  Boston  Resolu 
tions,  66 

Suffrage,  Lincoln  thought 
Southerners  themselves  should 
control,  203 

Sumner,  Charles,  philippic  against 
South;  Brooks's  attack  on, 
143-4;  negro  suffrage  to  give 
"Unionists"  new  allies,  220 

Texas,  application  for  admission, 
93;  Channing  threatens  seces 
sion  if  admitted,  94 

Tilden,  Samuel  J.,  letter  to  Kent, 
secession  inevitable  if  Lincoln 
elected,  172-3-4 

Underground  railroads,  Professor 

Hart's  picture  of,  103 
Union,  the,  Webster's  great  speech 

for  in  1830,  31;   effect  of,  32 
Union  sentiment  South;  Whigs,  34 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  influence 

on    Northern    sentiment,    129- 

133 


248 


INDEX 


War,  the,  nature  of,  180 

Washington,  a  Federalist,  18;  his 
appeal  for  Union,  30 

WTebster,  on  7th  of  March,  107; 
his  sole  concession,  in;  con 
demns  personal  liberty  laws  and 
Abolitionists,  115;  congratu 
lated  and  denounced,  117; 
"Ichabod,"  119;  Rhodes 's  esti 
mate  of,  122;  his  speech  for 
"The  Constitution  and  the 
Union";  Wilkinson's  estimate 
of,  122;  E.  P.  Wheeler's  esti 
mate  of,  125;  Webster's  opin 
ion  of  Abolitionists  and  Free- 
soilers,  126 


Welles,  Gideon,  opinion  in  1867  as 
to  debasing  elective  franchise, 
232 

Whites,  South,  fought  fraud  with 
fraud  during  Reconstruction,  till 
Constitution  amended  continued 
it,  232;  difficulties  of  their  task, 
233;  growing  spirit  of  altruism; 
school  taxes  divided  pro  rata, 
234 

Wilmot  proviso,  in 

Wisconsin  nullifies  fugitive  slave 
law,  178 

Women,  devotion  of  during  war, 
North  and  South,  195 


249 


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